The family trilogy, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West, presents Sam Shepard's strong bond with his culture and his people, illustrates an intense connection with the land, and reveals a deep longing for the traditions of the past, through the dramatisation of the betrayal of the American Dream. Although obviously part of the American tradition of family drama, Shepard never completely conforms, subverting the genre by debunking the traditional family in order to make a statement about the present disintegration of the bonds of family life and modern American society. In the trilogy Shepard decries the loss of the old codes connecting with his despair at the debasement of the ideals of the past and the demise of the American Dream. Finally, the plays insist on the importance a new set of tenets to supplant the sterile ethics of modern America / M.A. (English)

The family trilogy, Curse of the Starving Class, Buried Child and True West, presents Sam Shepard's strong bond with his culture and his people, illustrates an intense connection with the land, and reveals a deep longing for the traditions of the past, through the dramatisation of the betrayal of the American Dream. Although obviously part of the American tradition of family drama, Shepard never completely conforms, subverting the genre by debunking the traditional family in order to make a statement about the present disintegration of the bonds of family life and modern American society. In the trilogy Shepard decries the loss of the old codes connecting with his despair at the debasement of the ideals of the past and the demise of the American Dream. Finally, the plays insist on the importance a new set of tenets to supplant the sterile ethics of modern America / M.A. (English)

本篇論文主要呈現非裔劇作家奧古斯特˙威爾森在《鋼琴課》劇中，如何藉由書寫黑人經驗來解構被白人扭曲的黑人歷史，從而建構真實的黑人歷史。威爾森在此劇中透過三個重要的議題：黑人的遷徙、奴隸制度、以及藍調，來探究舊有的和新開發的黑人認同。為了進一步說明劇作家在黑人主體上的看法，史都華˙霍爾（Stuart Hall）的後現代認同觀念便可作為此研究的大前提：主體並不是由個別的、單一的認同所組成，而是同時由數個認同所構成。理論部分，史都華˙霍爾對文化認同與漂泊離散（diaspora）的概念、保羅˙吉爾羅伊（Paul Gilroy）對漂泊離散、奴隸制度、與黑人音樂的闡述、米歇˙傅柯（Michel Foucault）的對抗記憶（counter-memory）與歷史的觀念以及法蘭茲˙法農（Frantz Fanon）的後殖民理論均被運用來閱讀《鋼琴課》這一劇。 本論文共分為五個章節。第一章提供劇作家、劇本、以及理論架構的一般介紹。第二章處理黑人漂泊離散認同（diasporic identity）的議題，而此認同展現於黑人的遷徙經驗上。劇中男主角威利男孩（Boy Willie）最後決定要返回南方的家，他的決心使他有別於待在北方的其他黑人。第三章透過審視鋼琴與鬼的意義與功用，著重在黑人種族認同（racial identity）的討論上。威利男孩與白人鬼的爭鬥突顯威爾森對黑人自主權的重視。第四章探索藍調跟文化認同（cultural identity）的關連性。劇中女主角柏妮斯（Berniece）藉由彈奏鋼琴來召喚祖靈，此不僅幫助她與過去作連結，並使她得到一個正面的自我確認形象。第五章是結論，總結威爾森在此劇中所展現的新的黑人認同。 / This thesis attempts to show how August Wilson deconstructs the white distortion of black history and constructs an authentic black history by writing about the black experience in The Piano Lesson. Wilson explores the old and the new black identities from three significant issues of migration, slavery, and the blues respectively in the play. In order to further explicate the playwright’s arguments on the black subject, Stuart Hall’s idea of postmodern identity serves as a major premise: the subject is composed not of a single, unitary, but of several identities at the same time. Stuart Hall’s idea about cultural identity and diaspora, Paul Gilroy’s elaboration on diaspora, slavery, and black music, Michel Foucault’s theory of counter-memory and the concept of history, and Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial argument are applied to the reading of The Piano Lesson. The thesis consists of five chapters. Chapter One provides a general introduction to the playwright, the play, and the theoretical framework. Chapter Two deals with the issue of black diasporic identity, which is demonstrated in black migration. Boy Willie’s final decision to return home in the South distinguishes him from those who stay in the North. Chapter Three centers on the discussion of black racial identity by scrutinizing the meaning and function of the piano and the ghosts. Boy Willie’s fighting with the white ghost foregrounds Wilson’s concern over black autonomy. Chapter Four explores the relationship between the blues and cultural identity. Berniece’s invocation to her ancestors through playing the piano helps her connect with the past and gain a positive image of self-recognition. Chapter Five is the conclusion which sums up the manifestation of Wilson’s construction of new black identities in the play.

A new nomad society is colonizing the desert landscape of the American Southwest. It is a leaderless seasonal swarm, dispersed but densely connected socially, able to form and disband agile urban communities the size of large American cities. It consists of highway bound leisure hunters driving extremely wasteful vehicles that while parked are able form a dense and resilient pioneer society. They are predominantly retired and constructing a new American dream, an informal utopia created from potlucks, social media, satellite dishes and mobile homes. This frontier society of urban flexibilization, decentralization and total urbanization is a product of the complexity and uncertainties of cities being amplified by technological and social disruption, climate change and economic crises. In a mobile future, informal and temporary uses will be important drivers of development and the urban periphery a breeding ground for new forms of urbanism. How do we govern, plan for and understand this development? The nomad cities are poorly documented and understood, especially in academia. With this thesis I aim to change that. I have conducted extensive field studies, including both quantitative mapping and semi-structured qualitative interviews. The data has been analyzed using a theoretical framework consisting of network theory of Castells, spatial analysis ideas of Lefebvre, Venturi, Friedman, Deleuze and Guattari, and social theories of Bourdieu, Foucault and Standing among others. The basic building block of the nomad city are recreational vehicles (RVs); trailers, motorhomes and camper vans. The RV is in itself a hybrid phenomenon that embodies conflicting ideals of the American society: total freedom of movement, the reinvention of the self on the frontier and the American dream. It is both individualistic and community based, and it’s urban forms are highly adaptable to societal changes, mirroring society’s development as well as the changing landscape it inhabits. It recreates itself and revises its citizens’ common habitus with every iteration. The RV world contains multiple layers of meaning for our increasingly urbanized society. It is a frontier for the expansion of exurbia and a physical manifestations of the network society. It creates small initiatives that create ripple effects and thereby a transformation of the urban fabric. To encourage these practices the role of planning needs to be revised. It should not primarily be to decide what is built but to enable the emerging practices that are there. Instead of presenting a grand plan we should allow a multitude of bottom up processes to lead development. In the words of Cedric Price: “The primary aim of planning is not to specify an ideal state but to open up to new possibilities”.

No description available.

Initially proposed in 2001, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act (DREAM Act) continues to be relevant after nearly 20 years of debate. The year 2010 was significant because there seemed to be some possibility of passage. This study investigated the ways in which the DREAM Act discourse was framed that year by supporters and opponents. Selected Congressional speeches of three supporters and three opponents were analyzed using the approach to frame analysis developed by Schön and Rein. Accordingly, attention went to each individual's metacultural frame (i.e., culturally shared beliefs), policy frame (i.e., identification of problem and presentation of possible solution), and rhetorical frame (i.e., means of persuading the audience). Attention also went to the shared framing among supporters and the shared framing among opponents as well as differences in framing across the two groups. Although speakers varied in framing the issue, there were commonalities within groups and contrasts between groups. For supporters, the metacultural frame emphasized equity/equal opportunity, fairness, and rule of law; for opponents, the metacultural frame stressed rule of law, patriotism, and national security. For supporters, the policy frame underscored unfairness as the problem and the DREAM Act as the solution; for opponents, the policy frame emphasized the DREAM Act as the problem and defeating the DREAM Act as the solution. Rhetorical frames also differed, with the supporters making much use of testimonial examples and the opponents making much use of hyperbole. The study illustrates (1) how the same named values and beliefs can have dramatically different interpretations in metacultural framing, as were the case for rule of law and American dream in this discourse; (2) how the crux of an issue and its intractability can be seen by looking at how the problem is posed and how the solution is argued, and (3) how speakers strengthen their claims with particular kinds of rhetorical devices. Through descriptions of political positioning on the DREAM Act, the study contributes to understandings of ongoing issues regarding the lives of undocumented young people who have received and are receiving education in the U.S.

No description available.

No description available.

Dieses Buch ruft das Genre Kino der (kollektiven) Ängste ins Leben und beschreibt und analysiert dieses Genre anhand beispielhafter Fallstudien nach dem 9/11. Es liefert vielschichtige Filmanalysen zu vier Hollywood-Filmen; Crash (2004), The Brave One (2007), The Company Men (2010) und The Purge: Election Year (2016). Diese Forschung stellt einen Versuch dar, eine abgrenzende Definition dieses Kinos als filmisches (Sub-)Genre zu konzipieren und einen Überblick über die Eigenschaften dieses Kinos zu geben, wobei besonderes Augenmerk auf post-9/11 Filme mit der Angst-Narrativ der inneren Bedrohung gelegt wird. Dieses Genre steht an der Schnittstelle ästhetischer Erkenntnisse, historischer Entwicklungen, kultureller Phänomene und politisch-ideologischer Schattierungen, was die Hybridisierung zu einem der Hauptmerkmale dieser Filmgattung macht. Diese Studie betrachtet das kollektive Angstkino nach dem 9/11 als eine Ansammlung historischer Ängste, von denen einige aus genau dieser Zeit stammen (wie der Patriot Act und die ständigen Alarmstufen Rot), während andere auf frühere Epochen der US-Geschichte zurückgehen (wie die Ankunft der ersten europäischen Siedler in einer unbekannten feindlichen Umgebung, die Hexenjagd in Salem, der Rote Schrecken, die Bürgerrechtsbewegung und die satanische Panik). Anders gesagt, das Buch untersucht die inneren Assoziationen der Filme mit einer Reihe historischer Ängste von der Gründung Amerikas bis zur Gegenwart. Darüber hinaus geht diese Studie den Echos dieser Ängste nach und beleuchtet ihre Ausdrucksformen und ihre Echos in anderen Filmen, literarischen Werken, Genres und Mythen. Obwohl die untersuchten Ängste oft mit relativ spezifischen Problemen verbunden sind (wie Race-Ängste und Kulturkriege, Kriminalitätsängste und Waffenkultur, Wirtschaftsängste und der Finanzcrash sowie politische Ängste und Wahlparanoia), sind sie immer noch überwiegend, nach Ansicht der Autorin, das Produkt eines halben Jahrhunderts neoliberaler Politik. / This book brings 'the cinema of (collective) anxieties' to life as a genre, and it describes and analyzes this genre based on exemplary post-9/11 case studies. Thus, it provides multilayered film analyses of four Hollywood movies; Crash (2004), The Brave One (2007), The Company Men (2010), and The Purge: Election Year (2016). This research constitutes an attempt to conceptualize a demarcating definition of this cinema as a cinematic (sub)genre and to provide an outline of the traits and characteristics of this cinema while paying special attention to the cycle of post-9/11 movies depicting the fear narrative of internal threat. This genre stands at a junction of aesthetic realizations, historical developments, cultural phenomena, and political-ideological shades, which makes hybridization one of the leading features of this cinematic genre. This study approaches the post-9/11 collective anxiety cinema as an accumulation of historical anxieties, some of which stem from this very period (such as the Patriot Act and the constant Red Alerts), while others date back to earlier eras in US history (such as the arrival of the first European settlers in an unknown hostile environment, the Salem Witch Hunt, the Red Scare, the civil rights movement, and the Satanic panic). In other words, the book explores the films' inner associations with bundles of historical anxieties from the inception of America until the current era. Furthermore, this study traces the echoes of these anxieties and highlights their forms of expression and their echoes in other movies, literary works, genres, and myths. Although the examined anxieties are often tied to relatively specific problems (like racial anxieties and culture wars; crime anxieties and gun culture; economic anxieties and the financial crash; political anxiety and election paranoia), they are still largely, in the author's view, the product of half a century of neoliberal policies.

MA paper is devoted to the researching of interaction between national myths and popular arts in American movies. The philosophical Ideas of G. Bodriyar, M. Kastels, E. Said, A. Kostina, K. Razlogov, and E. Shapinsky are in the basic of methodology. And anthropological ideas of Levi-Strouss, Ealiade, Meletinsky and Zhuladze are in the methodological foundation too. The paper consists from three parts. The specialty of contemporary cultural and social situation is analyzed in the first part of paper. The conceptual approaches to the definition of interaction between national identity and popular art are recovered in the second part. The third part of the paper is rewired the content and function of American’s myths in the American popular movies. The author gives conclusion that popular art represents national myths and therefore national identity is constructed by popular art. / Магистерская диссертация сосредоточена на взаимовлиянии национального мифа и массового искусства на примере кинематографа США. В качестве методологии исследования используется философско-культурологическая методология, представленная идеями Ж. Бодрийяра, М. Кастельса, А.В. Костиной, К.Э. Разлогова, Е.Н. Шапинской, Э. Саида, и других; культурно-антропологическая методология, выработанная К. Леви-Стросом, Е.М. Мелетинским, М. Элиаде, А. Цуладзе и другими. Работа состоит из трех глав. В первой главе рассматривается характеристика современной социокультурной ситуации, в которой существует массовое искусство. Во второй главе анализируются концептуальные походы к определению механизма взаимовлияния национальной идентичности и искусства. В третьей главе исследуется содержание американских национальных мифов и то, как они функционируют в американском массовом кино. В конце работы делается вывод, что массовое искусство репрезентирует национальные мифы и тем самым конструирует национальную идентичность.