Tracy K. Smith's Pulitzer Prize winning collection of poetry, Life on Mars, has been celebrated and analyzed as an elegy to Smith's father by many reviewers and scholars. And while this reading is valid and has been openly endorsed by Smith herself, our understanding of this collection and Smith's father is incomplete without Smith's treatment of motherhood and religion, two previously unexplored fields in relation to Life on Mars that complete our picture of Smith's father. Smith uses her own new role as a mother and her religious questions about the afterlife and her father's fate to address her father's passing. This paper first discusses the previously hidden role of Smith's unborn daughter Naomi, specifically hearkening to poems in the fourth section of Life on Mars which describe Naomi's conception and the painful process of giving birth. This is followed by an analysis of Smith's father and mother and their interconnected relationship to both Smith and her child. The third section of this paper complicates Smith's more idyllic depictions of her family members with universal examples of violence, specifically violence towards women that can lead to unwanted motherhood like rape. The final section of this paper takes previous discussions of motherhood, parenthood, and violence to describe Smith's interest in the living and the dead and how the poems in Life on Mars tie together these disparate groups through the shared experience of loss and gain. This blurred boundary between life and death culminates in Smith's vision of the future, a future Earth which will be incomplete and "hollow" without children, just as Smith's past would be empty without her familial relationships. This link between the deceased and unborn makes Smith's imagined future meaningful and invites further scholarship on Life on Mars, asking for scholars previously interested in only Smith's father to include Smith's descriptions of motherhood and religion in their analysis of Smith's work.

In this paper, I analyze and compare the novel The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon with the filmscript by Tracy Oliver for the 2019 movie adaptation. First, I demonstrate how the narrative in The Sun Is Also a Star deals with the literary ideas of fate and destiny and how scholars have defined the concepts. Secondly, I argue that the filmscript is a literary text that can be equated to the novel in a literary analysis of their narrative features. I claim that the narrative features of the novel and the filmscript embody fate and destiny in different ways because of the differences in their narrative situations and thought representations. I argue that the narrative situation of the novel, with its authorial narrator and narrative levels, embodies a relationship between fate and destiny as different perspectives are put into focus in the narration. However, the filmscript embodies these concepts as distinct because the narrative situation of the heterodiegetic narrator does not represent the same connectedness. I then maintain this argument as the filmscript in its thought representation and replacement of it with images and speech representation continues to portray the concepts as separate. In contrast, the thought representation of the novel embodies the relationship between the concepts because the thoughts represent connectedness and cause and effect. In my concluding remarks, I look at possible areas of future research.

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La presente tesi di dottorato ha come oggetto la trasposizione televisiva di tre romanzi character driven: Heidi, Pippi Calzelunghe e The Story of Tracy Beaker. Questi, analizzati soprattutto dal punto di vista della protagonista femminile, sono stati studiati, così come i relativi adattamenti, utilizzando un modello metodologico di analisi che poggia le sue basi teoriche sia nell'estetica della letteratura per ragazzi sia nelle teorie dell'adattamento e della sceneggiatura. Il mercato audiovisivo e la tipologia di spettatori cambiano rapidamente e ciò rende necessaria un'attualizzazione non solo tematica, ma anche stilistica dell'opera originaria, alla ricerca di un compromesso tra la fedeltà al testo iniziale, necessaria per permettere al target l'immediata riconoscibilità dell'opera e dei personaggi, e l'esigenza di rispettare le richieste della contemporaneità. A livello accademico, lo studio degli adattamenti della letteratura per l'infanzia si è concentrato quasi esclusivamente in ambito cinematografico e non televisivo, nonostante quest'ultimo fornisca molti spunti di riflessione tanto sul processo di adattamento in sé quanto sulla serialità. Il presente lavoro si propone perciò di andare a riempire il gap teorico sull'argomento, ponendosi necessariamente a cavallo di due ambiti, -la letteratura e l'audiovisivo. Di conseguenza, l'approccio privilegiato è più letterario che pedagogico e si interseca con gli studi sull'adattamento e sull'industria audiovisiva. / This PhD dissertation investigates the adaptations from children's novels into television series, with a focus on three character-driven stories: Heidi, Pippi Longstockings and The Story of Tracy Beaker. Starting from the original novels, investigated mostly from the point of view of the female protagonist, the study then analyses the corresponding television adaptations, whether animated or live action, through a methodology that has its theoretical basis both in the aesthetics of children's literature and in the screenwriting theories. Nowadays, the audiovisual market and therefore the public are changing rapidly, making it necessary to update the thematic and the stylistic features of the original works from which the adaptations are drawn. Actually, adaptation is often a compromise between the contemporary market demand and the fidelity to the content, necessary to fulfil the expectations of the target audience. Surprisingly, there is a scarcity of critical literature on children's television adaptations, even if they represent a very rich topic as they raise specific issues both on the adaptation process itself and on serialisation. The present work, therefore, aims to fill the existing gap in the field of children's adaptations, placing itself where two critical areas, literature and media, meet. Consequently, the primary narrative approach intersects with studies on adaptation and audiovisual industry.

The aim of the thesis is to investigate theological understandings in conjunction with the baptism of children and to develop such of these understandings as can be seen to be “trovärdiga” (credible or trustworthy) in the contemporary context of Church of Sweden. The theoretical point of departure is taken in a hermeneutical theological method of correlation between interpretation of “Situation” and interpretation of “Tradition”. A trustworthy theology emerges in a critical and/or constructive encounter between the interpretation of Tradition and the interpretation of Situation. Such an encounter can be established within an area of problematics. Three problem areas are identified that are present in the Swedish context of baptizing children in Church of Sweden. A) The first problem area concerns the theological interpretation of the relationship between those baptized and those not in a pluralistic society. B) Theological interpretation of “destruction” and what the theological tradition names original sin. How can a trustworthy baptismal theology be developed that takes suffering, oppression, the ecological crisis, seriously in the present situation and at the same time handle or solve the problems related to the theological tradition of original sin? C) How can a trustworthy baptismal theology solve or handle the problems related to a dichotomous construct of the relationship between God and the world? Four types of material are analyzed: sociological and statistical material, ecumenical theological resources for interpreting baptism, two different orders of baptism at use in Church of Sweden and baptismal liturgies celebrated according to these orders of baptism, and primarily Oriental Orthodox traditions of the Baptism of Jesus. Several understandings are developed and among them three over-arching concepts found fruitful for solving or handling the problems concerned: the baptismal tradition connected to the Baptism of Jesus interpreted in the light of A Trinitarian Theology of Creation that understands baptism as an expression of The Mystery of Creation, The Sacrament of Creation . / Kolla att datum 16 oktober blev rätt!Kolla att de tre kursiveringarna på sista avsnittet i abstarct inte flyter samman till en enda (jfr pdf).Gordon Lathrop är professor emeritus från Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, och Yale Divinity SchoolKirsten Busch Nielsen är professor i systematisk teologi vid Köpenhamns universitet (opponenten)

I first became enamoured with vampire Gothic after reading Bram Stoker's Dracula in high school, but gradually became dissatisfied with the Australian adaptations of the sub-genre. In looking for examples of Australian vampire Gothic, a survey of more than 50 short stories, 23 novels and five movies made by Australians reveals fewer than half were set in an identifiably Australian setting. Even fewer make use of three key, landscape-related tropes of vampire Gothic - darkness, earth and ruins. Why are so few Australian vampire stories set in Australia? In what ways can the metaphorical elements of vampire Gothic be applied to the Sunburnt Country? This paper seeks to answer these questions by examining examples of Australian vampire narratives, including film. Particular attention is given to Mudrooroo's Master of the Ghost Dreaming series which, more than any other Australian novel, succeeds in manipulating and subverting the tropes of vampire Gothic. The process of adaptation of vampire Gothic to the Australian environment, both natural and man-made, is also a core concern of my own novel, Vampires' Bane, which uses earth, darkness and a modern permutation of ruins to explore its metaphorical intentions. Through examining previous works and through my own creative process, Vampires' Bane, I argue that Australia's growing urbanisation can be juxtaposed against the vampire-hostile natural environment to enhance the tropes of vampire Gothic, and make Australia a suitable home for narratives that explore the ongoing evolution of Count Dracula and his many-faceted descendants.

This thesis is an attempt at understanding South African photography through the lens of Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, Tracy Rose, David Goldblatt, Jo Ractliffe and Santu Mofokeng. Through the works discussed this thesis intends to unpack photography as a complex medium similar to that of language and text, as well as attempt to understand how exploring South African experiences and spaces through the lens of photography shapes and mediates them. Furthermore it also attempts to understand how these experiences and spaces conversely affect the discourse of photography or at the very least our perception of it. Through these photographers and their works it is hoped that ultimately the interconnected relationship of exchanging codes that takes place between photography and society will be highlighted. The example of connectivity or dialogue I believe exists between the medium of photography and the physical/social and psychological spaces it photographs will be mediated through Deleuze and Guattari‟s conception of “the wasp and the orchid” where “the wasp becomes the orchid, just as the orchid becomes the wasp...an exchanging or capturing of each other‟s codes”. Other theorists I will be looking at include Vilém Flusser, focusing in particular on his book Towards a Philosophy of Photography, as well as Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes and others. The main aims and objectives of this thesis are to understand the veracity of the documentary image and whether or not the image harbours any objective truth, as well as whether truth, if it can truly be said to exist in the world, resides between the camera and the seen world. This dichotomy is further complicated by the matter of subject-hood and technical and philosophical understandings of the camera as an apparatus. At no point do I aim to be conclusive, rather it is hoped that by developing the dynamic tension between the theory and the image world that I will be able to bring fresh insight into the reading of a changing South African condition and the subject position of the photographer in relation to this condition.

U.S. naval expansion is considered to be inevitable. When it is discussed at all, especially in recent scholarly works, it merits at most a few paragraphs briefly mentioning that in the late nineteenth century the United States constructed a modern navy. It is portrayed as if U.S. leaders mostly favored greatly expanding the nation’s naval power and that little to no serious opposition existed among government leaders. Naval expansion, however, fundamentally altered U.S. foreign policy. It represented one of the most significant shifts in the Gilded Age, an era often thought of as a forgettable period in U.S. politics with no major political events taking place. If anything, naval expansion should be the single most discussed political decision to come out of this period and President Benjamin Harrison should be remembered for his role in this development. After all, there are few presidential actions from this period that continue to greatly affect U.S. policy today, and Harrison and his fellow naval expansionists deserve more than a footnote in history.

As an Actor Combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors, theatrical violence is something that has always captivated me. When a female combat instructor once told me that even though I throw a great punch I will never be able to use it because women are always on the receiving end of violence in theatre, I wondered if this was truly the case. After a thorough exploration of several works with theatrical violence, I am glad to say that it is not the case. When most scholars examine violence in theatre, the focus is either male-centric or specifically on domestic violence situations involving a male abusing a female. I will examine theatrical violence through a new lens that has yet to be thoroughly critically explored: violence where the female is the aggressor. Through selected works of three American minority female playwrights: Suzan-Lori Parks' In the Blood, Maria Irene Fornes' Conduct of Life, and Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, I will analyze the female-enacted violence that occurs within these plays using feminist theories and psychology to examine how it happens, why it happens, who the victims are, and what these acts of violence say about minority American women in society today. I will explore the stage directions and dialogue surrounding the violence and analyzing the use or absence of weaponry, the breakdown or build-up of language prior to and after the violent action, and whether or not the violent action occurs before or after a violent action is committed against the female. For comparison, I will also analyze work by an American male playwright with violence in the same way: Tracy Letts' August: Osage County.