The risk management within a bank is an important part given its status as a pivotal component within the capital adequency framwork stipluated in the Basel Accords. To proficiently be assessing, monitoring and managing market risk that the bank undertakes is therefore a part of the daily activities at Swedbank. For the majority of the measures and models, the bank is employing a full revaluation approach, implying a revaluation of each position under diverse market conditions specified across various scenarios to estimate risk. Prior to this thesis, Swedbank has been missing the full revaluation approach for the product commodity futures in their portfolio. The commodity futures needs to be treated differently from other futures due to their underlying being a physical product being produced, stored and transported. To help Swedbank being able to calculate and measure a diversified set of risk measures for commodity futures with high accuracy and according to market practise and implement the valuation model with results closest to market practise into their risk system, various valuation models have been replicated and compared in Python. The focus has been on investigating different variations of a model derived from the theory of storage and no arbitrage (Cost of Carry model) as well as a more advanced model developed from a belief of mean reverting short-term prices and an uncertain long-term equilibrium price (Schwartz and Smith Two Factor model). These models were replicated on three different commodity types in Swedbanks portfolio, Wheat, Rapeseed and Gasoil, to determine which valuation model that could estimate prices closest to the real prices on the market. The findings revealed that one variation of the Cost of Carry model could be matched exactly to the mark-to-market price due to the real price being known. The Schwartz and Smith Two Factor model was clearly the second best model, estimating prices very well but not always exactly. The most suited model that could match the price exactly, was chosen to be implemented into the risk system of Swedbank and had identified risk factors as interest rate, exchange rate and underlying spot price. With VaR simulations shifting the chosen risk factors, it could be proved that the commodity futures are traded back-to-back since all positions were offsetting each other. Since Swedbank is an intermediary and the business is about providing access to the market for Swedbanks customers, the back-to-back trading was something that Swedbank assumed but earlier not could prove. Furthermore, the back testing revealed that the special characteristic convenience yield could potentially be considered a risk factor in the future and that it would be relevant if the business model of commodity futures at Swedbank would change. / Riskhanteringen inom en bank är en viktig del med tanke på dess roll som en avgörande komponent inom kapitaltäckningsramverket som föreskrivs i Basel-avtalen. Att noggrant bedöma, övervaka och hantera den marknadsrisk som banken åtar sig är därför en del av de dagliga aktiviteterna på Swedbank. För de flesta åtgärder och modeller använder banken en fullständig omvärderingsmetod, vilket innebär en omvärdering av varje position under olika marknadsförhållanden specificerade över olika scenarier för att uppskatta risken. Innan det här projektet har Swedbank saknat den fullständiga omvärderingsmetoden för produkten råvaruterminer i sin portfölj. Råvaruterminer måste behandlas annorlunda än andra terminer på grund av att deras underliggande är en fysisk produkt som produceras, lagras och transporteras. För att hjälpa Swedbank att kunna beräkna och mäta en diversifierad uppsättning riskmått för råvaruterminer med hög noggrannhet och enligt marknadspraxis samt implementera värderingsmodellen med resultat som ligger närmast marknadspraxis i deras risksystem har olika värderingsmodeller replikerats och jämförts i Python. Fokuset har legat på att undersöka olika variationer av en modell som härstammar från teorin om lagring och inget arbitrage (Cost of Carry-modell) samt en mer avancerad modell som utvecklats från en tro om ett genomsnittligt återgående kortsiktigt pris och ett osäkert långsiktigt jämviktspris (Schwartz och Smith Two Factor-modell). Dessa modeller replikerades för tre olika typer av råvaror i Swedbanks portfölj: Vete, Raps och Gasol, för att avgöra vilken värderingsmodell som kunde uppskatta priser närmast de verkliga priserna på marknaden. Resultaten visade att en variation av Cost of Carry-modellen kunde matchas exakt med marknadsvärdet eftersom det verkliga priset var känt. Schwartz och Smith Two Factor-modellen var tydligt den näst bästa modellen, vilket uppskattade priserna mycket bra men inte alltid exakt. Den mest lämpade modellen som kunde matcha priset exakt valdes för att implementeras i Swedbanks risksystem och hade identifierade riskfaktorer som ränta, växelkurs och underliggande spotpris. Genom VaR-simuleringar som skiftade de valda riskfaktorerna kunde det bevisas att råvaruterminerna handlas back-to-back eftersom alla positioner neutraliserade varandra. Eftersom Swedbank är en mellanhand och affärsmodellen handlar om att ge Swedbanks kunder tillgång till marknaden, var back-to-back-handel något som Swedbank antog men tidigare inte kunde bevisa.  Vidare visade backtestingen att den särskilda karaktären convenience yield eventuellt skulle kunna betraktas som en riskfaktor i framtiden och att detta skulle vara aktuellt om affärsmodellen för råvaruterminer på Swedbank skulle förändras.

Diese Dissertation sucht eine Lücke in der Forschung zur interkulturellen Kommunikation (IKK) zu schließen, bietet damit eine umfassende interdisziplinäre Darstellung und Evaluation westlicher und chinesischer Werteforschung und beschreibt die Ergebnisse von in China durchgeführten Wertestudien, die die Wertetheorie von Schwartz erproben und erweitern. Band 1 enthält (1.) einen historischen Überblick über die Werteforschung und grundlegende Kulturkonzepte in verwandten Disziplinen; (2.) eine Kriterien basierte Analyse der Werteforschung; (3.) eine Abgrenzung des Wertekonzepts und Unterscheidung von anderen verwandten psychologischen Domänen; (4.) eine Neubetrachtung des Spannungsverhältnisses zwischen Moderne und Tradition hin zu einer cluster-basierten Wertematrix; (5.) einen Beitrag zur Bedeutung von Werten vor dem Hintergrund eines beschleunigten sozialen Wandels; (6.) einen historischen Überblick über die Beschreibung von chinesischen Werten aus verschiedenen Perspektiven und ihren Bezügen zur internationalen Forschung, sowie (7.) einen Überblick der aktuellen Werteforschung aus China. Band 2 beinhaltet eine multi-methodisch angelegte Stichprobenuntersuchung, die qualitativ und explorativ Sprache und Kultur anhand von chinesischen Begrifflichkeiten, Ausdrucksweisen und Sprichwörtern untersucht. Mittels einer statistischen Analyse von indigenen Daten wird eine quasi quantitative Untersuchungsmethode konstruiert, die eine Verbindung indigenen emischen Daten mit dem allgemeinen Untersuchungsrahmen für die Abbildung von Wertrelationen nach Schwartz herzustellen vermag. Als wichtigste Ergebnisse der Untersuchung sind: (1) Das universelle Model nach Schwartz wurde mit kleineren kontextbezogenen Modifikationen anhand der chinesischen Daten bestätigt, ebenso (2.) das stetige Auftreten von zehn „dichten kulturellen Clustern“ sowohl auf der Ebene der Kultur als auch des Individuums, womit eine Erweiterung der sieben Bereiche von Schwartz. (3.) Auf der theoretischen Ebene müssen neue Cluster/ Dimensionen beachtet werden, wobei empirisch belegbar eine Teilung von „Embeddedness“ und Egalitarianismus vorgeschlagen wird und es Hinweise darauf gibt, dass es Überschneidungen von Mastery und Hierarchiewerten gibt. / This dissertation addresses a gap in intercultural communication research, providing a comprehensive interdisciplinary overview and evaluation of western and Chinese values studies, as well as devising multi-method studies among Chinese to test and expand Schwartz’s values theory. Volume 1 provides a(n) (1) extensive historical review of values and core culture concepts in related disciplines, (2) an integrated check-list of value studies critiques; (3) an attempted detangling of the values concept from other related psychological domains; (4) a rethinking of tradition-modernity assessments, proposing a matrix of co-existing value clusters; (5) the particular relevance of values in rapid social change; (6) a historical summary of Chinese values descriptions with links to international research; and (7) an extensive English review of recent Chinese mainland values research. Volume 2 reports multi-method probes including qualitative language and culture explorations at the term, expression and proverb unit of analysis as well as statistical analysis of indigenous data. It presents exploratory quasi-quantitative procedures for associating indigenous emic data with the Schwartz etic framework for values relation mapping. Consistent cultural clusters, emerging matrix dimensions, and fit statistics are analyzed to propose and analyze value set sub-scales. Main findings include (1) confirmation of the universal Schwartz model in these Chinese samples with some contextual modifications; (2) consistent appearance (at both cultural and individual levels) of ten “thick cultural clusters” that enhance and expand Schwartz’s seven domains; (3) theoretical expansion that in such contexts, new clusters/dimensions need to be considered, with robust evidence to split Embeddedness and Egalitariansm and evidence of some blended Mastery and Hiearchy value sets which deserve reconsideration for how they might reflect interdependent or collective culture reinterpretations. Keys are provided for future research, varied theoretical frameworks are reconsidered, and proposals put forward for a more historically-, contextually-, theoretically- and meaning-based values study research process.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-12-03T18:33:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcello_Marchiano.pdf: 1740349 bytes, checksum: df2913ccacd44fbf4d6f4a098e9a94bd (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-06-24 / The individual values researches have gain growing attention of the academy, specially by it??s predicting expected behavior condition. The Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) identifies, evaluates and allows the prioritization of the human values by its relative importance. The objective of this article, exploratory research, is to apply the SVS in the board members population of the brazilian corporations, listed or not, in the BMF&Bovespa. The results allow the evaluation of the influence, the compatibility and conflict of the relation between value-behavior in both Corporate Governance systems; the pro-shareholder and pro-stakeholder. The conclusions obtained, in the sample of 121 board memebers, indicates that significative axiological priorities differences in the individuals values belonging to each of the corporate governance systems could be noted / As pesquisas dos valores individuais t??m ganhado aten????o crescente da academia, especialmente quanto ?? predi????o de comportamentos esperados. O Invent??rio de Valores de Schwartz (IVS) identifica, avalia e permite priorizar os valores humanos em fun????o de sua import??ncia relativa. O objetivo desta disserta????o, de car??ter explorat??rio, ?? aplicar o IVS na popula????o de conselheiros de administra????o das empresas brasileiras, listadas ou n??o, na BM&FBovespa. Os resultados permitiram avaliar a influ??ncia, a compatibilidade e o conflito da rela????o valor-comportamento nos dois sistemas de Governan??a Corporativa: o pr??-shareholder e o pr??-stakeholder. As conclus??es alcan??adas, na amostra de 121 conselheiros de administra????o, sugerem que existem diferen??as na prioridade axiol??gica dos valores dos indiv??duos pertencentes a cada um dos sistemas de Governan??a Corporativa

Submitted by Geandra Rodrigues (geandrar@gmail.com) on 2018-09-27T15:51:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 daniellelobojustopinheiro.pdf: 20180936 bytes, checksum: 98e45bb923da9d2234c5a70398868760 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2018-10-01T18:08:20Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 daniellelobojustopinheiro.pdf: 20180936 bytes, checksum: 98e45bb923da9d2234c5a70398868760 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-10-01T18:08:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 daniellelobojustopinheiro.pdf: 20180936 bytes, checksum: 98e45bb923da9d2234c5a70398868760 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-09-09 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Azalactonas são heterociclos derivados de aminoácidos protegidos e ciclizados. Por conter em sua estrutura um sítio eletrofílico, um sítio pro-nucleofílico, além de um sítio nucleofílico ou eletrofílico (que será determinado pelas condições reacionais), esses compostos são extremamente versáteis. Nesse trabalho é demonstrado a reação das azalactonas com o reagente de Schwartz, que através de uma de redução quimiosseletiva gera derivados de aminoaldeídos com excelentes rendimentos em apenas 2 minutos de reação. Outra reação de redução quimiosseletiva demonstrada no trabalho envolve o uso de azalactonas de Erlenmeyer, hidrogênio e Pd/C como catalisador. Dessa forma, azalactonas saturadas funcionalizadas, foram possíveis de ser obtidas em uma metodologia simples, com excelentes rendimentos. O processo foi ainda adaptado para reações em um sistema one-pot, produzindo assim, adutos de Michael, Mannich e produtos de abertura de maneira simples e eficiente. O sítio nucleofílico das azalactonas também é explorado em reações de dimerização diastereosseletivas, utilizando uma base de Brønsted formada in situ pela reação entre acetonitrila e sal tricloroacetato de potássio ou sódio. O mecanismo da reação e estudos cinéticos são demonstrados a partir de uma análise obtida por experimentos online no RMN de ¹H. Além disso, um análogo de um produto natural é obtido através de uma redução estereosseletiva dos dímeros. O sítio nucleofílico das azalactonas também é explorado em reações de carbonilação α-arilativa catalisadas por Pd, utilizando o sistema de duas câmaras, seguido de sua abertura, obtendo, dessa forma, aminoácidos α,α-dissubstituídos protegidos. O mecanismo da reação é proposto após reações controle terem sido realizadas. Os mesmos aminoácidos também puderam ser sintetizados e marcados com o ¹³C. Esses compostos marcados foram aplicados em reações quimiosseletivas, como a reação de descarboxilação de Krapcho, reduções quimiosseletivas, e síntese de heterociclos como as oxazolonas e pirazolonas. / Azlactones are heterocycles derived from amino acids. There are an electrophilic site, a pro-nucleophilic site, and a nucleophilic or electrophilic site (determined by the reaction conditions). These compounds are extremely versatile. In this work the reaction of the azlactones with Schwartz reagent is demonstrated. A chemosselective reduction of these compounds is possible to generate aminoaldehydes in excellent yields in only 2 minutes reaction. Chemosselective reduction of Erlenmeyer azlactones is also demonstrated by using hydrogen gas and Pd / C as a catalyst. In this way, functionalized saturated azlactones are possible to obtain in excellent yields. The process was further adapted to reactions in a one-pot system, producing Michael, Mannich and opening products in a simple and efficient manner. The nucleophilic site of azlactones is also explored in the diastereoselective dimerization reactions promoted by a Brønsted base, affording by the reaction in situ between acetonitrile and potassium or sodium trichloroacetate salt. The mechanism of the reaction and kinetic studies are demonstrated from an analysis obtained by ¹H NMR online experiments. In addition, a stereoselective reduction of a dimer analogue gave a natural product in high both yield and diastereoselectivity. The nucleophilic site of the azalactones is exploited in Pd catalyzed α- arylation carbonylation reactions, using the two-chamber system, followed by their opening, thereby obtaining protected α,α -disubstituted amino acids. The mechanism of the reaction is proposed based on control reactions. The same amino acids could also be synthesized with ¹³C-labeled CO. These coumpounds were applied in chemosselective reactions, such as krapcho decarboxylation reaction, chemosselective reduction, and synthesis of heterocycles such as oxazolones and pyrazolones.

Les techniques de criblage actuelles (in vitro et in silico) sont dépendantes des efforts menés en biologie médicinale pour identifier des cibles biologiques pertinentes ; cibles difficiles à définir pour les maladies génétiques dites "perte de fonction". De plus, les composés issus de ces cribles s'avèrent souvent inefficaces et/ou toxiques une fois confrontés à la complexité physiologique d'un organisme entier. Pour contourner ce problème, nous proposons d'utiliser le nématode C. elegans, notamment pour des maladies répondant aux critères suivants : i) physiopathologie complexe et/ou mal comprise excluant le développement à court terme de médicaments sur une base rationnelle, ii) peu d’espoir de thérapie génique/cellulaire à court terme, iii) conservation chez C. elegans du gène relié à la maladie humaine et induisant un phénotype exploitable une fois inactivé. Nous démontrons ici que ce petit nématode permet de tester, à moindre coût, un grand nombre de composés chimiques tout en conservant la complexité physiologique d'un animal entier. De plus, la souplesse génétique de cet animal permet d'apporter rapidement des informations sur le mode d'action des composés identifiés. Ainsi, en plus du but initial visant à identifier des molécules bioactives à intérêt thérapeutique, cette approche peut permettre de dégager de nouvelles cibles moléculaires utiles pour l'industrie chimique, et cruciales pour la recherche de traitements contre les maladies perte de fonction. Finalement, nous présentons comment mettre en place une telle stratégie, notamment pour la myopathie de Duchenne, l'amyotrophie spinale et le syndrome de Schwartz-Jampel. Enfin, nous présentons les résultats obtenus lors des différentes campagnes de criblage, les validations des molécules les plus prometteuses et les travaux effectués pour tenter de comprendre leur mode d'action chez le nématode. / Current high-throughput screening methods for drug discovery rely on the existence of targets. Moreover, most of the hits generated during screenings turn out to be invalid after further testing in animal models. To by-pass these limitations, efforts are now being made to screen chemical libraries on whole animals. One of the most commonly used animal model in biology is the murine model Mus musculus. However, its cost limits its use in large-scale therapeutic screening. In contrast, the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is gaining momentum as screening chemical tool. This tiny worm combines genetic amenability, low cost, and culture conditions that are compatible with large-scale screens. Its main advantage is to allow high-throughput screening in a whole-animal context. Moreover, its use is not dependent on the prior identification of a target and permits the selection of compounds with an improved safety profile. Here, we introduce this approach with the Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, the Spinal Muscular Dystrophy and the Schwartz-Jampel syndrome. We present the methodology used with each model to screen up to 7,000 compounds and the results of these screening campaigns. We further present the validation of our best hits and try to understand their mechanism of action.

Les techniques de criblage actuelles (in vitro et in silico) sont dépendantes des efforts menés en biologie médicinale pour identifier des cibles biologiques pertinentes ; cibles difficiles à définir pour les maladies génétiques dites "perte de fonction". De plus, les composés issus de ces cribles s'avèrent souvent inefficaces et/ou toxiques une fois confrontés à la complexité physiologique d'un organisme entier. Pour contourner ce problème, nous proposons d'utiliser le nématode C. elegans, notamment pour des maladies répondant aux critères suivants : i) physiopathologie complexe et/ou mal comprise excluant le développement à court terme de médicaments sur une base rationnelle, ii) peu d'espoir de thérapie génique/cellulaire à court terme, iii) conservation chez C. elegans du gène relié à la maladie humaine et induisant un phénotype exploitable une fois inactivé. Nous démontrons ici que ce petit nématode permet de tester, à moindre coût, un grand nombre de composés chimiques tout en conservant la complexité physiologique d'un animal entier. De plus, la souplesse génétique de cet animal permet d'apporter rapidement des informations sur le mode d'action des composés identifiés. Ainsi, en plus du but initial visant à identifier des molécules bioactives à intérêt thérapeutique, cette approche peut permettre de dégager de nouvelles cibles moléculaires utiles pour l'industrie chimique, et cruciales pour la recherche de traitements contre les maladies perte de fonction. Finalement, nous présentons comment mettre en place une telle stratégie, notamment pour la myopathie de Duchenne, l'amyotrophie spinale et le syndrome de Schwartz-Jampel. Enfin, nous présentons les résultats obtenus lors des différentes campagnes de criblage, les validations des molécules les plus prometteuses et les travaux effectués pour tenter de comprendre leur mode d'action chez le nématode.

Background. A number of commentators (Holloway 1996 Muijen 1996a; 1996b) have suggested that two events in the form of homicides carried out by mental health service users came to exert a disproportionate influence on English mental health policy over the period 1985-2000. In particular it has been suggested that the events formed the focus for a ‘moral panic’ caused by ‘irresponsible’ and ‘sensationalist’ reporting in UK newspapers (Neal 1998; Prins and Swan 1998). Aims. In the light of such claims this study critically explores the role played by the deaths of Jonathan Zito and Isabel Schwarz play in establishing violent assaults perpetrated by people experiencing mental illness as a ‘social problem’. It examines whether a shift in the discourse on mental illness took place in UK newspapers and explores how the deaths of Isabel Schwarz were and Jonathan Zito were framed in terms of causal responsibility. Finally it evaluates what influence, if any, the deaths in question had on the social policy agenda. Design. Case study / mixed design integrating quantitative and qualitative methods. Method. Content analysis consisting of a longitudinal analysis of the nature of the representation of mental illness changed over the period in two UK newspaper. Framing a sub-type of discourse analysis examined changes in the discourse of mental illness and the effects of the emergence of the community care tragedy as a ‘new’ narrative. It was also used to examine the potential influence on social policy on mental illness of changes in societal level frames particularly the emergence of the risk society. Results. The content analysis found that mental illness appeared increasingly in the context of a threat to public safety in newspapers over the period but that the overall representation was more balanced. The framing analysis identified and evidenced a competitive process in framing the issue of homicides committed by service users with mental health problems and demonstrated the potential influence of macro level social frames on the policy making proces

No description available.

No description available.

Al Qaeda killings, posttraumatic stress, and the Gothic together triangulate a sizable space in recent American fiction that is still largely uncharted by critics. This thesis maps that shared territory in four novels written between 2005 and 2007 by writers who were born in America, and whose protagonists are the survivors in New York City after the World Trade Center falls. Published in the city of their tragedy and reviewed in its media, the novels surveyed here include Don DeLillo’s _Falling Man_ (2007), Jonathan Safran Foer’s _Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close_ (2005), Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s _The Writing on the Wall_ (2005), and Jess Walter’s _The Zero_ (2006). The thesis issues a challenge to the large number of negative and dismissive reviews of the novels under consideration, making a case that under different criteria, shaped by trauma theory and psychoanalysis, the novels succeed after all in making readers feel what it was to be alive in September 2001, enduring the posttraumatic stress for months and years later. The thesis asserts that 9/11 fiction is too commonly presented in popular journals and scholarly studies as an undifferentiated mass. In the same critical piece a journalist or an academic may evaluate narratives in which unfold a terrorist's point of view, a surviving or a dying New York City victim's perspective, and an outsider's reaction set thousands of miles away from Ground Zero. What this thesis argues for is a separation in study of the fictive strands that meditate on the burning towers, treating the New York City survivor story as a discrete body. Despite their being set in one of the most known cities of the Western world, and the terrorist attack that they depict being the most- watched catastrophe ever experienced in real-time before, these fictions have not yet been critically ordered. Charting the salient reappearing conflicts, unsettling descriptions, protagonist decay, and potent techniques for registering horror that resurface in this New York City 9/11 fiction, this thesis proposes and demonstrates how the peculiar and affecting Gothic tensions in the works can be further understood by trauma theory, a term coined by Cathy Caruth in Unclaimed Experience (1996: 72). Though the thesis concentrates on developments in trauma theory from the mid 1990s to 2015, it also addresses its theoretical antecedents: from the earliest voices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that linked mental illness to a trauma (Charcot, Janet, Breuer, Freud), to researchers from mid-twentieth century (Adler, Lindemann) who studied how catastrophe affects civilian minds not previously trained to either fight war or withstand cataclysm. Always keeping at the fore the ancient Greek double-meaning of trauma as both unhealing “wound” and “defeat,” the thesis surveys tenets of the trauma theorists from the very first of those who studied the effects on civilian survivors of disaster (of what is still the largest nightclub fire in U.S. history, which replaced front page coverage of World War II for a few days: the Cocoanut Grove blaze in Boston, 1942) up to those theorists writing in 2015. The concepts evolving behind trauma theory, this thesis demonstrates, provide a useful mechanism to discuss the surprising yearnings hiding behind the appearance of doppelgängers, possession ghosts, terrorists as monsters, empty coffins, and visitants that appear to feed on characters’ sorrow, guilt, and loneliness within the novels under discussion. This thesis reappraises the dominant idea in trauma studies of the mid-1990s, namely that trauma victims often cannot fully remember and articulate their physical and psychic wounds. The argument here is that, true to the theories of the Caruthian school, the victims in these novels may not remember and express their trauma completely and in a linear fashion. However, the victims figured in these novels do relate the horrors of their memory to a degree by letting their narration erupt with the unexpectedly Gothic images, tropes, visions, language, and typical contradictions, aporias, lacunae, and paradoxes. The Gothic, one might say, becomes the language in which trauma speaks and articulates itself, albeit not always in the most cogent of signs. One might easily dismiss these fleeting Gothic presences that characters conjure in the fictions under consideration as anomalous apparitions signalling nothing. However, this thesis interrogates these ghostly traces of Gothicism to find what secrets they hold. Working from the insights of psychoanalysis and its post-Freudian re-inventers and challengers, it aims to puzzle out the dimensions of characters’ mourning in its “traumagothic” reading of the texts. Characters’ use of the Gothic becomes their way of remembering, a coded language to the curious. This thesis holds that unexpressed grief and guilt are the large constant in this grouping of novels. Characters’ grief articulation and guilt release, or the desire for symbolic amnesia, take paths that the figures often were suspicious of before 9/11: a return to organized religion, a belief in spirits, a call for vengeance, psychotherapy, substance abuse, splitting with a partner, rampant sex with nearby strangers, torture of suspects, and killing. All the earnest attempts through the above means by the characters to express grief, vent rage, and alleviate survivor guilt do so without noticeable success. True closure towards their trauma is largely a myth. No reliable evidence surfaces from the close reading of the texts that those affected by trauma ever fully recover. However, as this thesis demonstrates, other forms of recompense come from these searches for elusive peace and the nostalgic longing for the America that has been lost to them.