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This collection of short fiction explores femininity – a difficult term, in and of itself, because it implies that to be a woman is to be feminine in the traditional sense, or feminist in the revolutionary sense – rarely do the connotations allow for much in between. But I choose this term over “womanhood," for example, because it is more difficult, and culturally loaded, and conflicted, and even offensive. In truth, these stories attempt to portray the multi-faceted nature of how we see the feminine. They hope to convey the most fragile and complicated net of relationships, with men and with women, with mothers and fathers and children and lovers and enemies, each of whom make their own demands about what sort of femininity they require. Considering all this, I tend to think that there is no such thing as the much-talked-about “strong woman" in real life, not completely. She is constantly being pushed into corners where she is weak, or careless, or cruel–secretly unsure of who she is expected and ought to be. The result is a female psyche that is always shifting and disintegrating and dissolving, becoming someone or something else, like the characters in these eight stories. The modern woman is no sure thing. She is in flux and changing shape. And really, it is for those of us who watch to decide if it is for better, or for worse. / Master of Fine Arts

What is a library? It is easy to envision the ordinary and ubiquitous library that we are all familiar with, but is there more to libraries that is yet to be explored? What is a concept of a library? What do we as architects envision as the design for a library? The Thesis is built upon the idea that Libraries should be designed out of stories, because stories are written in books and books are found in libraries. According to the writer Borges, the concept of a library, is that it is composed of an indefinite and infinite number of galleries, which are connected by vestibules. Anyone in this library can see upper and lower from any galleries and "all are repeated in the same disorder which constitutes an order!" ... The Thesis explores this concept of finding the order through repeated disorders, in another words, a labyrinth. The writer Umberto Eco has said in one of his novels: "How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths." In search of this "beauty" in the world, through this thesis I have explored and found the procedure for designing a library. / Master of Architecture

The stories in The Mundane Habits of the Opposite Sex explore themes of identity, loss, gender, and the often-complex landscape of human interaction. These are relationship stories, coming-of-age stories. Stories about searching for answers to mysteries both large and small. Loneliness is de rigueur for these characters despite a fervent desire to connect with others in a meaningful way. A Congressional intern misrepresents herself in order to mingle with the Washington in-crowd, a fledgling screenwriter is intrigued by an enigmatic woman with a distinct tattoo, a runaway honor student and an alcoholic former cop become unlikely travel companions on a cross-country road trip, and Iowa teenagers resist their own mortality by hanging out in a small-town graveyard. These stories ask the question: if we don’t fully know ourselves, how well will we ever truly know someone else? In settings both dreamy and extraordinarily commonplace, from sleepy diners to abandoned tourist traps, from the real world to places weird and imaginary, this collection examines the rare moments of beauty and persistent minefields that arise while navigating the convoluted intricacies of human experience. / Master of Fine Arts

A collection of short stories centered around characters in and from Virginia in a post-September 11th America. The characters, their despairs, hopes, and hopelessness are a product of a society that has watched horrible, life-altering events unfold on television, vowed to change their ways for the better, and then either forgotten that vow or become lost in the quest for how to change. Each main character is placed in either absurd or extreme situations that forces them to reexamine their lives and what they believe as truth. The central story of the collection, “The Man in the Backseat" is the story of a man who struggles to find meaning in his father’s suicide. “Martha Bullfinch and the Easter Bunny" is a dark comedy on paralyzing depression and hope. “Undressing Elvis" is a story about despair and the desire to better oneself. “Blue Yodels and Amber Ales" is a story about survival. “The Other Side of the Dunes" examines ideas of perception and “The Last Fair Deal Gone Down" is a story about memory, love, and loss. Iconic American music is a central theme that weaves its way through the stories. It’s used as a metaphor for the past, both of the characters and the society they live in. The music embodies memories both good and bad. In these stories and their characters’ personal searches for meaning, I hope to have found some truths about human nature and the desperate hope for change and meaning in a post-September 11th society. / Master of Fine Arts

This collection of stories explores themes of race, class, gender, and alienation through a variety of settings in which the characters experience some form of displacement and are forced to find a voice within an unfamiliar vernacular. At the heart of writing, and language itself, is that desire to be heard. Thus, these stories explore voices of people whose stories are often silenced or ignored. A Latina woman recounts memories of her physical scars as she tries to communicate with an American doctor in an emergency room, a Navajo woman finds comfort by adopting her son's daughter after he is imprisoned, a young boy struggles to understand himself when his family converts to a new faith, a young woman struggles with accepting ownership of her brother's piano after his suicide, an interracial couple finds a way to communicate through art after the effects of trauma, a mortician struggles with his beliefs during bankruptcy. At the heart of the stories are issues of identity—what defines oneself, what one cannot live without, what condemns, what brings redemption. Simple, Ugly Things is a collection of short stories full of conundrums, in which the characters are forced to find the connections of past to present, the pains of memory in small, simple things, the complexity inside simplicity, beauty in the seams of ugliness, peace within horror, and strength inside humility, as a way to have their voices heard. / Master of Fine Arts

This thesis explores the dynamics of narrative production and contestation within individuals’ stories and the collective stories of the communities in which they live. The research is focused on trying to understand the relationship between public stories constructed about place and community, and the stories told by the inhabitants of those places. A case study in the city of Bradford provides a focus for inquiry. A qualitative research design is utilised, combining theory with primary data collection and analysis. A narrative analysis of national, academic and local stories about Bradford is used to disaggregate collective narratives of the city and explore the relationship between popular, political and academic discourses. It provides a context for the analysis of in-depth interviews with a range of inhabitants from a selected geographic area within Bradford, centred on how their individual stories relate to the identified collective stories of Bradford. Analysis of the fieldwork data shows that individuals are often engaged in complex negotiations of public discourse in ways that may reinforce and contest existing stories, but also complement them with parallel stories that neither reinforce nor contest but construct a different narrative. It reveals and reflects on apparent contradictions within everyday storytelling, for example, how nostalgia can be displayed about harsh times of socio-economic decline, or how attitudes to change over time can be variably positive and negative depending both on the speakers’ positioning of themselves and of the interviewer, and the speakers’ purpose in the interaction.

葉嘉. / "2009年8月". / "2009 nian 8 yue". / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-131). / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Ye Jia. / 緒論 --- p.2 / Chapter 第一章 --- 《禮拜六》概貌 --- p.6 / 《禮拜六》的編者和作者 --- p.6 / 《禮拜六》的讀者 --- p.12 / Chapter 第二章 --- 《禮拜六》的翻譯 --- p.19 / 《禮拜六》的譯者 --- p.19 / 翻譯小說的刊行 --- p.21 / 翻譯小說的原著來源 --- p.24 / Chapter 第三章 --- 短篇翻譯小說中的「佳人」 --- p.28 / 「佳人」的形象 --- p.28 / 「佳人」的群像 --- p.45 / 兩個傳統：本國文學和晚清翻譯 --- p.69 / Chapter 第四章 --- 翻譯與原創及圖像的對話 --- p.77 / 翻譯小說與原創小說 --- p.77 / 翻譯小說與圖像 --- p.87 / Chapter 第五章 --- 「佳人」對現實世界的回應 --- p.94 / 「佳人」與婚戀自由 --- p.95 / 「愛國佳人」、「英雌」與國家危機 --- p.98 / 「悍婦」與女權運動 --- p.101 / Chapter 第六章 --- 再看譯者 --- p.106 / 「佳人」的譯者：敘事學與翻譯學角度 --- p.106 / 另一種翻譯觀 --- p.110 / 另一種「啓蒙」 --- p.112 / 結論 --- p.123 / 參考書目 --- p.125

This thesis has two components : a novel and an exegesis. Pangamonium is a comic novel that parodies and satirises adventure romances and travel accounts as well as global imperialisms. Francis, an American journalist who has lived in Australia, travels to a tiny Asian country, Panga, a kingdom that has been taken over by a military dictatorship. There he meets Easter, an African on a quest to find the grave and buried treasure of his pirate ancestor. The odd couple endure a comic odyssey together and ultimately liberate a group of enslaved children from a vibrator factory. The Ludic Mode of Pangamonium is an exegesis of the novel. It explores the ludic mode, which it considers an open play of signification characterised by freedom, reflexivity and subversion, and it explores the work of Nabokov, Calvino and Borges to explicate manifestations of play. Pangamonium is also examined in the light of its mythic hero quest structure and its relationship to the discourses of Orientalism and Neocolonialism. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - School of Humanities, 2007.

This thesis explores the dynamics of narrative production and contestation within individuals’ stories and the collective stories of the communities in which they live. The research is focused on trying to understand the relationship between public stories constructed about place and community, and the stories told by the inhabitants of those places. A case study in the city of Bradford provides a focus for inquiry. A qualitative research design is utilised, combining theory with primary data collection and analysis. A narrative analysis of national, academic and local stories about Bradford is used to disaggregate collective narratives of the city and explore the relationship between popular, political and academic discourses. It provides a context for the analysis of in-depth interviews with a range of inhabitants from a selected geographic area within Bradford, centred on how their individual stories relate to the identified collective stories of Bradford. Analysis of the fieldwork data shows that individuals are often engaged in complex negotiations of public discourse in ways that may reinforce and contest existing stories, but also complement them with parallel stories that neither reinforce nor contest but construct a different narrative. It reveals and reflects on apparent contradictions within everyday storytelling, for example, how nostalgia can be displayed about harsh times of socio-economic decline, or how attitudes to change over time can be variably positive and negative depending both on the speakers’ positioning of themselves and of the interviewer, and the speakers’ purpose in the interaction.