Appalshop, a multi-media and arts organization in Whitesburg, Kentucky emerged in 1969 at the crossroads of several different developments. It started as a War on Poverty program and its history exhibits the contradictory ideologies that fueled that effort and the political changes that forestalled it. The production company began in the midst of technological advances in media and is an early example of the democratization of technology and the potential of portable video equipment in affecting social change. Most importantly, its genesis is located within the context of a renewed interest in Appalachian history and culture and the related issues of negotiating regional cultural identity in the American national context. This one small organization in Eastern Kentucky provides a window to a wide slice of American history and culture in the midst of profound changes. Throughout the twentieth century the Appalachian region has been repeatedly characterized in mainstream American culture in an overtly negative light. Appalshop played an integral role in countering these characterizations and the stereotypes they generated and reinforced. Technology became more accessible the second half of the twentieth century. As a result, Appalshop was able to challenge these negative perceptions of the region in the national mind by placing cameras, printing capabilities, drama, and visual art in the hands of Appalachians. This allowed them to speak for themselves—first to each other and eventually to the nation. This dissertation focuses on the founding of the Community Film Workshop of Appalachia, the subsequent abandonment of the project by the federal government, the acquisition of control over its artistic output by artists and staff members, and its expansion between 1969 and 1984. It also addresses the significant role Appalshop played in the burgeoning Appalachian social movement context that emerged concurrently with its founding and its related role as a social change organization.

In Dharma Bums (1958), by Jack Kerouac, and Americana (1971), by Don DeLillo, the authors explore the complexity of selfhood as pertaining to individual identity and subjectivity in mid-twentieth century American culture and consciousness, paying specific attention to the relation that these concepts have with media, spatiality, and Buddhism. Although numerous critics provide extensive analyses of these texts, authors, and themes, no critic has paired these texts and authors, and investigated these particular themes in relation to selfhood. I argue that in Dharma Bums and Americana, Kerouac and DeLillo each investigate the influence of media, spatiality, and Buddhism on selfhood, as well as provide competing models of selfhood that offer either self-transformation or self-limitation.

In his writing on the nature and purpose of the novel between 1895 and 1911, Wells endorses artistic principles for their social effects. His public lecture on “The Contemporary Novel,” written in 1911 in response to a debate with Henry James, is the most lucid articulation of his artistic principles, and his later autobiographical reflections on the debate obscure the clarity of the earlier version. Wells’s artistic principles emerge in his reviews of contemporary fiction for the Saturday Review (1895–1897), where he extends Poe’s concept of “unity of effect” to the novel and justifies his preference for social realism with a theory of cultural evolution. His views develop further in the context of sociological and philosophical debates between 1901 and 1905. Wells commenced the century with a sceptical view on the social effects of literature, but his exposure to British Pragmatism encouraged him to revive the principles developed in his reviewing. The view on Wells’s conception of the novel presented in this thesis challenges the prevailing view that he began his career with a set of purely artistic principles, adding sociological and intellectual apparatus after the turn of the century.

Dating back to the dialectic between Socrates and Plato, innovative technologies have disrupted the traditions of discourse and created cultural divisions relevant to composition studies. These conversations are echoed in the Twentieth Century through the work of Melvin Kranzberg. Looking to the future, he sought to record the history of technology to maintain the constant upsurge of innovation. Like Kranzberg’s history of technology, the field of rhetoric and composition and this thesis seek to define technology and understand its value in order to navigate and interrogate effectively the deluge of twenty-first-century new media. Kranzberg—like many scholars in computers and composition—utilized various rhetorics to advocate for technological literacy despite its unpopularity in the academy.

“Collective Bodies and Collective Change: Blindness, Pilgrimage, Motherhood and Miracles in Twentieth Century Mexican Literature” examines Mexican literature from 1940 to 1980. It analyzes representations of collective bodies and suggests that these bodies illustrate oppression and resistance in their historical context, which coincides with the beginning of a period of massive modernization in Mexico. I aim to develop a reading that interprets this imagery of collectives, unusual bodies, and blindness as more than symbols of oppression. By examining this imagery alongside representations of pilgrimage, alternative modes of motherhood, and experiences such as miracles that figuratively connect bodies, I propose that these images challenge their historical context, and can be read as a gesture towards resistance. Novels and short stories by José Revueltas, Juan Rulfo, Rosario Castellanos and Vicente Leñero present collectives, blindness and unusual bodies. My reading of their works connects these textual bodies to oppression within their historical context, in particular, by the government, intellectuals, the medical system, the Catholic Church, family structure, the landholding system, and the land’s heat, wind and drought. These representations de-individualize characters, and, as such, destroy the ideal of the modern subject who would effect change through individual agency. Thus, when I argue that these same bodies act as a metaphorical collective subject whose actions, such as mass murder, and participation in religious revival and radical political movements, can point out social change, they challenge the ideal of an individual subject. By reflecting on the connection between literature that represents unusual bodies, a historical situation of oppression, and the potential for resistance, this analysis of literary texts provides a lens through which we can examine the stories’ historical context and ideas of individual and collective agency.

“Collective Bodies and Collective Change: Blindness, Pilgrimage, Motherhood and Miracles in Twentieth Century Mexican Literature” examines Mexican literature from 1940 to 1980. It analyzes representations of collective bodies and suggests that these bodies illustrate oppression and resistance in their historical context, which coincides with the beginning of a period of massive modernization in Mexico. I aim to develop a reading that interprets this imagery of collectives, unusual bodies, and blindness as more than symbols of oppression. By examining this imagery alongside representations of pilgrimage, alternative modes of motherhood, and experiences such as miracles that figuratively connect bodies, I propose that these images challenge their historical context, and can be read as a gesture towards resistance. Novels and short stories by José Revueltas, Juan Rulfo, Rosario Castellanos and Vicente Leñero present collectives, blindness and unusual bodies. My reading of their works connects these textual bodies to oppression within their historical context, in particular, by the government, intellectuals, the medical system, the Catholic Church, family structure, the landholding system, and the land’s heat, wind and drought. These representations de-individualize characters, and, as such, destroy the ideal of the modern subject who would effect change through individual agency. Thus, when I argue that these same bodies act as a metaphorical collective subject whose actions, such as mass murder, and participation in religious revival and radical political movements, can point out social change, they challenge the ideal of an individual subject. By reflecting on the connection between literature that represents unusual bodies, a historical situation of oppression, and the potential for resistance, this analysis of literary texts provides a lens through which we can examine the stories’ historical context and ideas of individual and collective agency.

This dissertation explores the relationship between state sovereignty and major instances of crimes against humanity committed in the latter 20 th century. In order to examine this dynamics of this relationship, the author analyzes the history and theory of the concept of sovereignty and examines five case studies of crimes against humanity: Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, Argentina during the military junta from 1976 to 1983, the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda in 1994, and the ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan. State sovereign power is shown to be an important facilitating factor in these atrocities as well as a major source of contention during the civil conflicts in which these crimes have taken place. International efforts to control or mitigate the damaging effects of state sovereignty, including humanitarian intervention, the International Criminal Court, and the promotion of democratization, are shown to be largely ineffectual and often end up strengthening state sovereignty.

The turn from the nineteenth century into the twentieth saw an increase in the number of composing European women attaining prominence in the music world. This period of history is also now recognised as one of the key phases of the first wave of feminism. Feminists and musical women moved in a similar stratum of society. Although women of this era have increasingly been the subject of scholarly research, music historians have rarely investigated the links between the turn of the century??s wave of composing women and feminists. This dissertation uses the feminist and musical press as a means to investigate composing women??s engagement with feminism. I examine feminists?? regard for women musicians and conversely composing women??s views on feminism. The thesis also reframes the privatelives of composing women through an analysis of primary sources. The composers who form the focus of this biographical investigation include Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Luise Adolpha Le Beau (1850-1927), Louise H??ritte-Viardot (1841-1918) and Armande de Polignac (1876-1962). Using a large body of newly analysed, unpublished correspondence and private papers, this research offers fresh insights into the biographies of composing women as well as their own self-portrayal, revealing the complex nature of Ethel Smyth??s sexuality and reassessing the fatalistic portrait of Lili Boulanger which has been drawn in some previous studies. These biographical insights background the contentions of the thesis that composing women and feminists shared common ground. Through investigating the presence of musicians in the feminist press and of feminism in the musical press, the thesis reveals an ambivalent relationship between feminists and musicians. The disappointed expectations of feminists are contrasted with the reasons composing women had for retaining a distance from feminism. The exploration of composing women??s political and personal context enables an understanding not only of their contribution to music history, but also of their place within the greater history of women??s development.

Since its introduction in Australia, photography has had a profound impact on Australian culture. The modern era, it is often alleged, has been dominated by the sense of sight, and from its inception, photography was explicitly understood in relation to this prestigious notion of modern vision. The camera and its associated technologies offered a “new” and modern way of seeing that was central to the overall project of modernity. This thesis is a study of the role of photography in the increasing visualisation of Australian culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on debates around modernism, it explores the cultural and social expressions of photography. Each chapter of this thesis considers an aspect of photography or its use, and traces the emerging popularisation and commodification of the photographic image. The social impact of photography is explored in a selection of specific contexts that include early camera clubs and societies of the 1890s, and the growing amateur movement that followed the new “point and shoot” technology so ably depicted by the Kodak Girl. Other contexts include the professional applications of photography, official and private uses of photography during World War I, and finally the journalistic and cinematic uses of the photographic image in the 1920s. Together these contexts show how the romance and optimism of technology ignited enthusiasm for the visual medium across class and gender divides, moving from initial popularity amongst a local scientific elite, spreading to amateurs, professionals, and eventually being put to political and social uses, throughout the world. (For complete abstract open document)

The turn from the nineteenth century into the twentieth saw an increase in the number of composing European women attaining prominence in the music world. This period of history is also now recognised as one of the key phases of the first wave of feminism. Feminists and musical women moved in a similar stratum of society. Although women of this era have increasingly been the subject of scholarly research, music historians have rarely investigated the links between the turn of the century??s wave of composing women and feminists. This dissertation uses the feminist and musical press as a means to investigate composing women??s engagement with feminism. I examine feminists?? regard for women musicians and conversely composing women??s views on feminism. The thesis also reframes the privatelives of composing women through an analysis of primary sources. The composers who form the focus of this biographical investigation include Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Luise Adolpha Le Beau (1850-1927), Louise H??ritte-Viardot (1841-1918) and Armande de Polignac (1876-1962). Using a large body of newly analysed, unpublished correspondence and private papers, this research offers fresh insights into the biographies of composing women as well as their own self-portrayal, revealing the complex nature of Ethel Smyth??s sexuality and reassessing the fatalistic portrait of Lili Boulanger which has been drawn in some previous studies. These biographical insights background the contentions of the thesis that composing women and feminists shared common ground. Through investigating the presence of musicians in the feminist press and of feminism in the musical press, the thesis reveals an ambivalent relationship between feminists and musicians. The disappointed expectations of feminists are contrasted with the reasons composing women had for retaining a distance from feminism. The exploration of composing women??s political and personal context enables an understanding not only of their contribution to music history, but also of their place within the greater history of women??s development.