Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:07:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 KlebiaRC_DISSERT.pdf: 2568345 bytes, checksum: 06d49f454b61d5d9e861b5e172d2395e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-12-18 / In the contemporary society, the language is presented in all social spaces and assumes many different purposes in order to meet the needs that emerge from each of these sphere. In traffic, this reality is not different. To guide vehicles, it is necessary to know, by means of reading artifacts, what the legislation establishes in what concerns the way to act in this domain. Thus, this works aims at describing the practices of literacy held in events of driver trainings and know the expectations generated by drivers/learners from this training. In theoretical terms, it anchors in Literacy Studies, comprehended here as social practices (BARTON; HAMILTON, 1998; KLEIMAN, 1995, 2008; MORTATTI, 2004; STREET, 1984; OLIVEIRA, 2008, 2010; ROJO, 2009; PAZ, 2008). Genre Theory (BRONCKART, 2004, 1999; OLIVEIRA, 2010) and in your multimodal instance (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 1996; DION?SIO, 2006). In terms of methodology, it follows the bias of qualitative research, because of its ethnographic nature (BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1994; MINAYO, 2010; CAN?ADO, 1994; CHIZZOTTI, 2005). The research corpus was generated by reading the Brazilian Traffic Code, by observing the literacy events held in Drivers Training Centers of Natal, analysis of course books used in these events, plus questionnaires with open and closed questions and semistructured interviews. The collaborators are constituted of drivers in training, and instructors who work in this field. The analyses show significant contributions regarding the placement more committed of future drivers with the welfare and safety of those who use the public roads, from the practice or reading done during the traffic training. The contribution of this work lies in the possibility to expand the discussion about the language practice uses regarding the training for the traffic, more specifically, the training of drivers of vehicles / Na sociedade contempor?nea, a linguagem se presentifica em todos os espa?os sociais e assume as mais diversas finalidades para atender ?s necessidades que emergem em cada uma dessas esferas. No tr?nsito, essa realidade n?o ? diferente. Para guiar ve?culos, faz-se necess?rio conhecer, por meio de artefatos de leitura, o que estabelece a legisla??o quanto ? forma de agir no ?mbito da mobilidade urbana. Dessa feita, o presente trabalho tem como objetivos descrever as pr?ticas de letramento realizadas em eventos de forma??o de condutores de ve?culos, ressaltando as expectativas geradas pelos condutores/aprendentes a partir dessa forma??o. Em termos te?ricos, ancora-se nos estudos de letramento, entendidos como pr?ticas sociais que se inserem nos mais diversos dom?nios (BARTON; HAMILTON, 1998; KLEIMAN, 1995, 2008; MORTATTI, 2004; STREET, 1984; OLIVEIRA, 2008, 2010; ROJO, 2009; PAZ, 2008), na Teoria dos g?neros (BRONCKART, 2004, 1999; OLIVEIRA, 2010) e na sua inst?ncia multimodal (KRESS; VAN LEEUWEN, 1996; DION?SIO, 2006). Metodologicamente, segue o vi?s da abordagem qualitativa de pesquisa, em virtude da sua natureza etnogr?fica (BOGDAN; BIKLEN, 1994; MINAYO, 2010; CAN?ADO, 1994; CHIZZOTTI, 2005). O corpus da pesquisa foi gerado por meio da leitura do C?digo de Tr?nsito Brasileiro, da observa??o de eventos de letramento realizados em Centros de Forma??o de Condutores da cidade do Natal, da an?lise das cartilhas utilizadas nesses eventos, al?m da aplica??o de question?rios com quest?es abertas e fechadas e entrevistas semiestruturadas. Os colaboradores compreendem condutores em forma??o, assim como os instrutores que atuam nesse campo. As an?lises apontam para contribui??es significativas no tocante a posicionamentos mais comprometidos dos futuros condutores com o bem-estar e seguran?a daqueles que utilizam as vias p?blicas, a partir das pr?ticas de leitura e de escrita realizadas no decorrer da forma??o para o tr?nsito. A contribui??o deste trabalho reside na possibilidade de ampliar as discuss?es acerca dos usos das pr?ticas de linguagem no ?mbito da forma??o para o tr?nsito, mais especificamente no que diz respeito ? prepara??o de condutores de ve?culos

O hormônio tireoideano (T3) desempenha papel importante no desenvolvimento, no crescimento e no metabolismo celular. Um dos seus principais efeitos é a ativação do metabolismo basal, contribuindo de forma importante com a regulação do peso corporal, enquanto diminui os níveis plasmáticos de triglicérides e colesterol. A ativação seletiva do receptor <font face=\"Symbol\">&#946 para o hormônio tireoideano (TR) por meio de agonistas seletivos reduziu níveis séricos de colesterol além de aumentar o metabolismo sem causar efeitos indesejáveis sobre o coração, osso ou músculo esquelético. Estes dados sugerem que estes agonistas poderiam ser úteis no tratamento das manifestações da síndrome metabólica tais como obesidade, hipercolesterolemia e resistência à insulina. Dessa forma, estudamos os efeitos da ativação do TR usando um agonista também da série GC, o GC-24, em ratos machos Wistar tratados com dieta rica em gordura e submetidos a injeções diárias de T3 correspondente a 10x a dose fisiológica (30g/g P.C./dia) ou GC-24 em dose equimolar (17g/g P.C./dia). Nosso estudo mostrou que o GC-24 preveniu algumas alterações metabólicas típicas da síndrome metabólica, tais como o aumento da massa gorda, intolerância à glicose e hipertrigliceridemia e corrigiu parcialmente outras como a hipercolesterolemia, o aumento do conteúdo de colesterol hepático e IL-6. Estes achados sugerem um papel importante do TR na mediação dos efeitos do T3 e devem ter repercussão importante na utilização potencial de agonistas seletivos ao TR<font face=\"Symbol\">&#946 como agentes hipocolesterolemiantes / Thyroid hormone (T3) plays an important role in the development, growth and cell metabolism. One of its main effects is to activate the basal metabolic rate significantly contributing to the regulation of body weight, while decreasing serum triglycerides and cholesterol levels. Thyroid hormone receptor selective activation through selective agonists reduced serum cholesterol levels besides increasing metabolic rate without causing undesirable side effects on the heart, bone or skeletal muscle. These data suggest that these agonists could be useful in the treatment of metabolic syndrome manifestations such as obesity, hypercholesterolemia and insulin resistance. Thus, we studied the effects of TR activation also using an agonist from the GC series, the GC-24 in male Wistar rats treated with high fat diet and submitted to daily T3 injections, corresponding to 10x physiological dose (30g/g B.W. /day) or equimolar doses of GC-24 (17g/g P.C. /day). Our study has shown that GC-24 prevented some of the metabolic abnormalities typical of metabolic syndrome such as increase in fat mass, glucose intolerance and hypertriglyceridemia and partially corrected other ones like hypercholesterolemia, the increase in hepatic cholesterol and IL-6 levels. These findings suggest that TR has an important role in the mediating of T3 effects and should have important repercussions in the potential use of selective agonists to TR as cholesterol lowering agents.

This thesis engages with the contribution made by literary and visual representations to debates about woman's role in Britain and America between 1860 and 1917. During, that is, a period of transition from the relative securities of the early Victorian period until the radical social shifts propelled by the First World War. I introduce design reform debates in painting and interior design, and examine how these were approached by George Eliot, Henry James and Edith Wharton, both in the homes they actually lived in, and those they created in their fictions, particularly for their female characters. Issues of the aesthetic and the moral, and the shifting relationships between them, underpin responses to art and design of the period, and are reflected generally in the literary and visual arts. The representation of women in domestic space, in actual and literary interiors, necessarily has ideological implications regarding the proper place of women within society. Thus, directly and obliquely, questions were repeatedly being asked about what constituted a desirable and fulfilling life for women in this society, and how such a life was to be achieved. To support my contention that this is a wide debate, I am looking at representational paintings of women in interiors, and advice about decoration in manuals of household taste, to augment the primary focus of the thesis on various fictional portraits of ladies. In the Introduction I discuss some recent examinations of women's space and place in Victorian society in art historical, literary and cultural studies. I explain the ideology of separate spheres and how it was interpreted in the plan and decoration of the home, underpinning the codification of interior decoration. I consider also how theorisations of 'the gaze' have been used to analyse representations of women and to explore issues of female empowerment. In Chapter One I examine the history of the design reform movement, Aestheticism, the application of the separate spheres in practice and the influence of manuals of household taste on how the home was actually decorated. Women's taste was a contested issue and the conceptual conflation of the women's body with the house formed the background to Aesthetic paintings of women. Some women decorators, often connected to radical political movements, used their professionalism to make the home a site of power, countering the seeming entrapment of women within the interior. In Chapter Two I examine George Eliot's unconventional home life, particularly the decoration of The Priory. I discuss how she utilised interiors and related themes of seeing and commodity fetishism in the explication of character in The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. Sympathy with the wider world enables Eliot's female characters to transcend the destruction of subjectivity threatened by constriction within an unhappy home. In Chapter Three I examine how Henry James dealt with the complicated conceptual relationship of Europe and America in The Europeans, using themes of the search for a home and the theatricality of self-presentation. I explain his notion of the House of Fiction, which was expanded by Edith Wharton. In The Portrait of a Lady, taste is used as a moral indicator in his discussion of the 'envelope of circumstance', with Aestheticism as the background to its use. James theorises the status of women as objects within interiors and what this means for Isabe1' s developing consciousness, as she searches for a husband and home. James uses the ambiguities of 'seeing' to explore how good taste is reached at expense of human relationships. In Chapter Four I discuss Henry James's own search for a home in his later years, and the significance of Lamb House. I discuss his friendship with Edith Wharton and compare their taste in decoration and how this related to moral themes in their novels. In The Spoils of Poynton good or bad taste seems to divide people morally. However, the rigidity of these divisions is questioned, and Fleda and Mrs Gereth discover unhappiness as an authentication of experience, in a small home without men. In Chapter Five I discuss Edith Wharton's development as a writer, the homes she grew up in and how this relates to the decoration and creation of her own homes. Her highly theorised approach to interior decoration is demonstrated by The Decoration of Houses, which was put into practice in her own homes, finding its most perfect expression in The Mount. Wharton's experiences of creating a home for herself gave her the strength to write out of a society disinclined to attribute serious artistic effort to women, and her writings re-enacted the problems she encountered living in this society. In Chapter Six I examine Wharton's The Houseo! Mirth, Ethan Frome and Summer, employing Wharton's aesthetic theories as a key to interpretation of her fictional works. Lily Bart is seen within different interiors as she descends through society, and gender issues are illuminated by a discussion of how the tableau vivant at the centre-point of the book brings together themes of theatricality and the gaze. Lily's self-fashioning is fraught with misreadings by her society, disastrous for her search for a happy and beautiful home. The poorer setting of the two novellas demonstrates that Wharton applied her theories across social strata. For Wharton, the achievement of a happy home, morally decorated, could be impossible for women in American Victorian society. In the Conclusion I look at paintings by progressive artists which enacted the instabilities of cultural change in their depiction of women in interiors. The Great War destroyed the bourgeois interior that the fictional women I have discussed found it so difficult to remain within. The rejection of the constrictions of separate spheres became part of a new feminist project, articulated by Virginia Woolf and Catherine Carswell. Women no longer felt the need to be constrained by the gilded cage, and looked for possibilities lying outside of the drawing room.

The present thesis investigates comics journalism, which is a subsection within the comics medium combining sequential images and journalism, and which has met with popular acclaim in the wake of Joe Sacco’s popularity in the 1990s. Since then, many examples of comics journalism have been published. However, the subject has not been comprehensively studied except for extensive research focusing on Sacco. This study aims to go some way towards filling this gap. This thesis focuses mainly on comics war journalism covering the turmoil in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by selecting graphic novels by two different authors from divergent backgrounds: Ayşegül Savaşta: Irak Şahini (Ayşegül at War: The Iraqi Falcon) by Kemal Gökhan Gürses from Turkey, and Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City by the Quebecois author Guy Delisle. There are four main chapters in this thesis. The first chapter, ‘Comics Journalism’, analyses this hybrid genre and tries to place it with a theoretical framework. The second chapter, ‘National Identities and Comics Journalism’, discusses how national identities are represented in comics journalism. The third chapter examines Ayşegül Savaşta: Irak Şahini and shows how comics journalism can function as a response to a war. The fourth chapter discusses Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City and explores comics journalism as cultural reportage. This thesis argues that the roots of comics journalism can be found in the Glasgow Looking Glass of 1825. While Joyce Brabner and Lou Ann Merkle together created today’s understanding of comics journalism, Joe Sacco popularized the genre via his coverage of the Palestinian issue and the Bosnian War. Another conclusion is that the September 11 attacks explain the rise of comics journalism, as output related to comics journalism has since blossomed. I will claim that comics journalism functions as an alternative to mainstream journalism and serves to show unreported news. Additionally this thesis will find that stereotypes play a very important role in picturing the relationship between comics and national identities, and will show how Muslim stereotypes have changed in comics, especially in superhero comics, produced after 9/11. This observation leads me to argue that comics journalists, regardless of their backgrounds, use essentially the same stereotypes when they draw Middle Easterners, Arabs especially, although negative Muslim stereotypes are very rare in comics journalism. Since religion and nationalism are undeniably intermingled in the Middle East, the comics journalists studied here employ Islam as a part of their narratives.

This study analyses the invisible forms of repression in the Bolivian art system by interpreting Roberto Valcárcel’s artwork in the light of Herbert Marcuse’s ideas on repression and liberation as expounded in Eros and Civilization. It considers, on the one hand, Valcárcel’s artwork in relation to the liberating role that Marcuse attributes to art (via phantasy, polymorphous eroticism, and Orphic paradigm). On the other hand, it explores the strategies devised by Valcárcel against repression, such as self-promotion, multiple texts, play, humour and unmasking certain repressive truths. The reading of Valcárcel’s work via Marcuse is supported by archival research from contemporary newspapers, exhibition documentation and Bolivian art history, which provide relevant information about the sorts of latent repression to which Valcárcel’s artworks responds. The dissertation is organised in five chapters in which examples of repressive beliefs are unveiled. Chapter One examines El Movimiento Erótico (The Erotic Movement, 1983) and the manifold strategies used by Valcárcel to escape the traps of a presumed type of sexual liberation (sexist and genital oriented) and capitalism’s culture industry. Chapter Two discusses artworks where the intentional construction of open meaning challenges the norm of a univocal creation and consumption of art. Chapter Three studies some of Valcárcel’s humorous identities in contrast with the dramatic, and overly serious self-perception of Bolivians artists. Chapter Four explores Valcárcel’s use of play, black humour and deceit as effective devices to escape hidden authoritarianism in society during dictatorial regimes. Chapter Five analyses how Valcárcel’s work unveils the latent repression in the idealisation of indigenous heritage through play and anti-thesis. The dissertation introduces a new topic into the study of art in Bolivia – veiled repression – at the same time that it sheds light on the potential of the artwork of Roberto Valcárcel to open new ways of historicizing and thinking about art in Bolivia.

This thesis describes a project investigating conceptions of design in the community of design stakeholders. A 'democratization of design' is identified, in terms of a widened mode of design engagement. The origins of the project are located in the accompanying observation that 'design means different things to different people'. The project has three aims: (i) to establish the contemporary UK context for the social study of design; (ii) to expand upon the identified theme of the democratization of design; and (iii) to empirically investigate conceptions of design in the community of design stakeholders. The first two aims are fulfilled through a review and discussion of existing secondary sources. The third aim is fulfilled by primary research, in the form of an empirical interview study conducted with design stakeholder informants. The interview study embodies an interpretative phenomenological theoretical perspective, and employs qualitative research method. A theoretical sample of 31 interview informants was drawn from five design stakeholder groups: Business; Designers; Education; Promotion; Users. Conceptions of design within the collected interview data are investigated through a template analysis. An analysis of collected interview data is presented in the form of an holistic map or 'template' of the data organized by thematic discussion of 'design'. These empirical findings are presented and discussed narratively and graphically. A total of 41 interrelating 'conceptions of design' are identified. Empirical findings are synthesized with the response to aims (i) and (ii). This generates two main final research outcomes: firstly, a degree of informant scepticism and ambivalence is apparent towards the heightened political, cultural and economic profile for design; secondly, the democratization of design is seen as a worthy ideal, but one which is difficult to realize. In conclusion, a number of further implications of the project are also discussed.

This doctoral thesis investigates the question 'How and why does Martha Rosier, artist and activist, bring the wars of Vietnam and Iraq back home time and again?' The aims of the investigation are to consider the two series of Martha Rosier's photomontages entitled "Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful" (1967 -1972) and "Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful, New Series" (2004 - 2008). The aims of such a consideration include: address of the photomontages themselves asthey relate to Rosier's particular development of a critical and activist photomontage practice (as initially developed in her feminist photomontage series "Beauty Knows No Pain: Body Beautiful" (1965 - 1974)); examination of original source images appropriated by Rosier for the making of her works, citing their original locations (work not undertaken previously by other scholars) and the events, scenes and valences thereof within these original photographs; theoretical propositions for how one can read the critical narratives and operative critiques embodied by Rosier's photomontages; and a consideration of the meta-commentary instantiated by Rosier's renewal of the anti-war photomontage series in light of 'the war on terror'. Results achieved This thesis has achieved a comprehensive overview of Martha Rosier's project as both artist and activist to bring the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq back home to the USas a work of anti-war activism, provoking a conversation with the population whose representatives in government are pursuing these foreign adventures in their names. The thesis achieves propositional readings ofthe theoretical workings of Rosier's images, alongside offering a historical contextualisation of both Rosier's extra-artistic activism and of the events depicted in her works which have not been recorded by other scholars. The researching and recording of original source material appropriated by Rosier in the making of these photomontages, again not recorded by other art historians elsewhere, along with the relevance of the selected source images, has been achieved within this thesis. Furthermore, this thesis has succeeded in postulating original theoretical appreciations of not only Rosier's photomontages in both eras ofthe series, but also ofthe nature of and motivation for her very act of renewal in the second stage ofthe series "Bringing the War Home". This is achieved specifically through my theoretical reading of the series as meta-commentary on the revision isms of American history and present foreign policy decision-making, presented through my concept of the 'reboot', which is developed in sympathetic concert with Rosier's own emphasis on popular culture / mass-media imagery asthe medium for presenting her critique within the series.

Since the 1960s contemporary art has seen a paradigm shift occur that has rejected the individual perspectives of modernity and begun to consider the value of connective and participatory aesthetics. New process-led and technologically-based practices have shifted the emphasis away from the art object and onto the art process, rendering the approach to making art a much more connected and relational one. In parallel, the curatorial role has radically shifted since it was first popularised in the 1970s. With less emphasis on the archival and more on the mediation and dissemination of practices, the role has risen to the forefront of the contemporary art arena, yet the actual methods of curation have not evolved in relation to the practices they curate, revealing an acute lack of curatorial convention for exhibiting and disseminating process-led practices. Employing the term Social Practice to actively define this ever-evolving body of process-led works, this research is situated at the juncture between the social outputs of reciprocal artworks and the curator’s role in exhibiting them. In establishing curation as a practice and situating it at a well-founded and clear point of perspective, this thesis argues that a clearer understanding of curatorial practice will in turn formulate an active and more integrated way of working. Focussed on the curation of media and performative practices specifically, and through four practical case studies: Becoming Electric, Fast and Slow Networks, Scatter Projects and Turnstile, in curatorial and exhibition practice, a dynamic form of curatorial practice is made manifest. This Social Curation seeks to contextualise fully the potential of exhibitions as structures of communication and exchange, maximising social interaction and engagement across curatorial approach, process and outcome. This thesis engages performative and participative approaches in its development of a research bricolage, revealing through practice how curation can function in an open and relational way. It contributes to methodical innovation through its use of a real-life initiative to test and ground the research strategies, and to the fields of artistic and curatorial research through original and responsive strategies towards evolving exhibition formats. Overall it has sought and revealed the means to both situate and question new ways of thinking and methods of working within the dynamic of the everyday.

This thesis examines the notions of self and no-self, specifically in light of the actor’s experience and manner of engagement in actor training. Arguing that the actor’s assumptions and beliefs regarding self affect embodiment and engagement in training, the thesis highlights the importance of considering these notions, and proposes some practical explorations. Training experiences in theatrical biomechanics and the work of Nicolás Núñez are reflected upon as practical references for the investigation. The lack of a fixed ongoing self in experience is identified as a key stance in considerations within philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, and the consequences, for the actor, of conceiving an independent, on-going self as existing in experience are suggested to lead to a perceived dualism that is at times considered to interfere in the actor’s work. The thesis suggests an understanding of self as a ‘myth’ created through ‘storytelling,’ conceptualisation and embodied metaphor, and as a process of neurological mapping as argued by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Antonio Damasio, Louis Hoffman and others. For considering the notion of no-self and the actor’s potential for operating without a sense of personal identity, the thesis draws on the no-self theory of Buddhism and ‘attunement’ and the ‘self-cultivation’ model proposed by Nagatomo Shigenori and Yuasa Yasuo. Drawing on no-self theory, the questions regarding dualism in the actor’s experience, a transformation of habitual patterns of movement and action, everyday consciousness and the actor’s manner of engagement in training are examined. Identifying actor-training as a process of self-exploration and self-definition in the work of Phillip Zarrilli, Eugenio Barba and others, the thesis argues for the importance of considering the notions of self and no-self and introduces alternative models for this examination.

Communication network technologies have been evolving exponentially in the late decades. These innovations increase the network capabilities and open new horizons to creating novel and original services. The heterogeneity in equipment qualifications increases the level of complexity in the technological advancement. In such environment, service management has become an everyday challenge to service providers. Important efforts have been deployed to innovate in the exploitation of intelligent devices in the home and other private locations. In this Thesis, we propose a framework for self-configuration of devices within Hone Area Networks. We propose a device self-configuration architecture based on IBM Monitor-Analyze-Plan-Execute using Knowledge autonomic control loop. To prove the validity of our system architecture and support its applicability, we developed a prototype system that gives a general control loop implementation for device self-configuration using the CPE WAN Management Protocol. A video streaming scenario is implemented and used to evaluate validity our framework.