This thesis examines the identities and experiences of second-generation British Muslim women in Nida Manzoor’s We Are Lady Parts (2021). Despite the proliferation of scholarship about the...Show moreThis thesis examines the identities and experiences of second-generation British Muslim women in Nida Manzoor’s We Are Lady Parts (2021). Despite the proliferation of scholarship about the complexity of Islamic practices and experiences of Muslims in the West, (immigrant) Muslim women are still plagued with homogenizing assumptions that relegate them to the realm of the passive or the dangerous. We Are Lady Parts demonstrates these realities while also offering alternative ways of understanding Muslim women by centering universal issues of faith, friendship, love and belonging. Using postcolonial and feminist theoretical frameworks, I aim to understand how unconventional representations of punk Muslim women undermine current patriarchal and colonial discourses both in Muslim and non-Muslim communities. I pay special attention to the women’s gender performativity and the ways in which it enables performative agency in their musical performances. I then address the heterogeneity of the characters’ identities by analyzing how they navigate their desires, romantic relationships, and religion. Finally, I examine the ways in which the women are excluded from embracing a British identity and how they form alternative paths to belonging via sisterhood and a decolonial worldview.Show less
This thesis questions how discursive practices in different adaptations of the same fairy tale: Little Red Riding Hood, reflect social and ideological values of their time and place, with regard to...Show moreThis thesis questions how discursive practices in different adaptations of the same fairy tale: Little Red Riding Hood, reflect social and ideological values of their time and place, with regard to gender ideologies and gender representation. This analysis is guided by poststructural theories of feminism that consider gender as a socially produced category, predominantly through language. This allows for the reading of “girlhood”, as a contested category involving various and often competing discourses of femininity. Additionally, this research relies on critical discourse analysis, which allows for a close reading of the authors’ linguistic choices that are potentially significant, as they encode and promulgate particular ideologies.Show less
This thesis is a study of word and image in a long poem by the American artist John Cage. Discussing the ethics of reading and the implication of the critic in the work of criticism, I argue that...Show moreThis thesis is a study of word and image in a long poem by the American artist John Cage. Discussing the ethics of reading and the implication of the critic in the work of criticism, I argue that Cage's text calls for an "architectonic" theory of reading which accounts for the materiality of written language.Show less
Human beings make sense of the world through the stories that they tell. Contemporary media is still predominately postmodern, but there are signs that there is a shift towards a new ‘post...Show moreHuman beings make sense of the world through the stories that they tell. Contemporary media is still predominately postmodern, but there are signs that there is a shift towards a new ‘post-postmodern’ paradigm. In this thesis I will analyze this shift through the figure of the literary vampire, introducing the concept of the hauntological dominant of post-postmodernism.Show less
Authors of books on minimalism often frame a simple lifestyle as a countercultural mode of resistence to a society made unbearable by consummerism. Decluttering and deciding to severely limit one's...Show moreAuthors of books on minimalism often frame a simple lifestyle as a countercultural mode of resistence to a society made unbearable by consummerism. Decluttering and deciding to severely limit one's purchases are seen as reliable ways to achieve happiness and to live more sustainably. What this thesis argues is that, far from proposing alternatives to a late-capitalist system that is alienating and environmentally disastrous, narratives of lifesyle minimalism fully embrace a neoliberal ethos of personal responsibility, individualization and faith in the free market. These recurring themes, together with a thoroughly depolicized view of social engagement, emerge over and over again in my analysis of two central topics in minimalist how-to literature: the pursuit of happiness and the attempt to reduce one's environmental footprint.Show less
A throrough analysis of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (2011), Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (2018) and Nathalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships (2019) as rewritings of Homer's Iliad, in...Show moreA throrough analysis of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (2011), Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls (2018) and Nathalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships (2019) as rewritings of Homer's Iliad, in order to establish their influence as contemporary rewritings on our (newfound) interpretation of Homer's Iliad.Show less
It is often assumed that all manipulation of truth follows a similar format. However, an examination of the way that ‘post-truth politics,’ the strategies, politicians and communities that...Show moreIt is often assumed that all manipulation of truth follows a similar format. However, an examination of the way that ‘post-truth politics,’ the strategies, politicians and communities that consciously manipulate facts to alter the ‘truth’ of their audience for political gains, and historiographic metafiction, a genre of postmodern literary texts that interpret history while simultaneously critically assessing and questioning the ‘truth’ they construct in their interpretation, shows that both post-truth politics and historiographic metafiction manipulate truth for completely different purposes. Yet, little research has been done on how these manipulations of truth work and how they differ. This thesis studies how truth is manipulated in post-truth politics and historiographic metafiction respectively, how these manipulations differ and overlap and what this means for future research on neutralizing or repurposing the manipulation of truth by post-truth politics.Show less
This thesis analyzes the social and academic value of fanfiction concerned with LGBTQ+ representation in Young Adult Literature. Since the heteronormative discourse looks upon LGBTQ+ as a...Show moreThis thesis analyzes the social and academic value of fanfiction concerned with LGBTQ+ representation in Young Adult Literature. Since the heteronormative discourse looks upon LGBTQ+ as a controversial theme, LGBTQ+ identities and storylines in media such as literature are often stereotyped and negative. Young Adult Literature finds itself in a position where it can provide positive LGBTQ+ representation because of its tendency towards realism. However, existing power structures still prevent this genre from fully reaching its potential. This potential can be realized through fanfiction, an open discourse available on the internet. On fanfiction platforms, people with LGBTQ+ identities write the narratives they need based on official media stories, such as literature and movies. This thesis offers two comparative analyses. First, I will compare the non-LGBTQ+ Young Adult novels The Hunger games: Catching Fire and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, with a selection of corresponding LGBTQ+ fanfiction. In the second part, I present a comparison between the LGBTQ+ Young Adult novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and a selection of corresponding LGBTQ+ fanfiction. Both of these analyses research the interpretations by fanfiction writers of the Young Adult novels on which they are grafted, highlighting their specific needs with regard to LGBTQ+ representation.Show less
In this thesis I analyse T. S. Eliot's ""The Waste Land"" in an ecocritical manner. By making use of contemporary theory on the relation between human and environment I shed new light on the...Show moreIn this thesis I analyse T. S. Eliot's ""The Waste Land"" in an ecocritical manner. By making use of contemporary theory on the relation between human and environment I shed new light on the conceptualization and representation of the environment in ""The Waste Land."" I do this by close reading descriptions of the environment in the poem, analyzing the struggle between the material and the spiritual, and analyzing language and agency.Show less
In this thesis I will discuss the notion of unreliability in the narratological environment of Ian McEwan’s novels Enduring Love and Atonement, in relation with the formalism theory and a cognitive...Show moreIn this thesis I will discuss the notion of unreliability in the narratological environment of Ian McEwan’s novels Enduring Love and Atonement, in relation with the formalism theory and a cognitive approach, respectively. The effects of traumatic experiences along with the concept of memory as an unreliable narrator will be considered as focal points in my analysis. In McEwan’s novels what constitute an unreliable narrator are his specific characteristics derived from the personality of the fictional character/narrator and the narratological setting. The research questions examined are how narrative is used as a way of making sense of the world, which narratological techniques in the aforementioned novels result in unreliability, and what the effects of unreliability are for the characters and the reader.Show less
Because contemporary network science is predicated on the assumption that similarity breeds connection, it transforms what seems to be an open web into poorly gated communities that propagate...Show moreBecause contemporary network science is predicated on the assumption that similarity breeds connection, it transforms what seems to be an open web into poorly gated communities that propagate already-existing forms of prejudice and discrimination. If the algorithmic fabric of social media platforms pushes people with the same views and interests towards each other, what does this mean for queer individuals in Beirut inhabiting a city whose very urban fabric segregates and limits their interaction in public space? What possibilities can the digital realm provide queer lives in a cyberspace unhinged by the geography of residence and the materiality of the body? I attempt to answer those research questions by relying on Sara Ahmed’s Queer phenomenology (2006) and on Wendy Hui Kyong Chun’s (2016) concept of “homophily”. Those theoretical lenses will guide my use of auto-ethnography and close visual analysis to explore the outputs and social media strategies of two case studies of visual activism in Lebanon: Beirut By Dyke and Kikafilmadina. My personal experience as a member of civil society groups in Beirut and my positionality as the creator of Beirut By Dyke orient me, to borrow Sara Ahmed’s term, towards these pages as cultural objects. The concept of the social media accounts, which revolves around the narrativization of queer inhabitance in space, propels me toward Sara Ahmed’s theory around sexuality as residence. Conversely, the social impact generated by both social media accounts on collective imaginations and social participation in cyber and physical space leads to me to question how “homophily” (Chun 2016) can be used to challenge the neoliberal assumptions it was built on. My aim is to counter existing literature around gender and digital culture whose understandable focus on the capitalistic and behaviorally predictive valence of social platforms is grim and dystopic (Goldberg 2016). Instead, I suggest that the study of platforms like Instagram offers a resource for queer studies insofar as it “emphasizes the importance of lived experience, the intentionality of consciousness, the significance of newness, or the role of repeated habitual action in shaping bodies and the world” (Ahmed 57). It is specifically the power of repeated habitual actions that I want to focus on in exploring digital possibilities. In a context where systemic oppression is difficult to dismantle and social change impossible to imagine, the creation of new paths is, after all, a labor of repetition.Show less
In the last few decades, there has been an emergence of feminist texts that relate themselves to Homer’s renowned myths, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Inspired by these feminist narratives that...Show moreIn the last few decades, there has been an emergence of feminist texts that relate themselves to Homer’s renowned myths, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Inspired by these feminist narratives that revolve around the centring of the female characters within a myth, this thesis poses an analysis of the emergence and importance of mythmaking by women writers. In my research, I have focused on Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls Madeline Miller’s Circe, two of the most recent examples of feminist mythmaking. Both Barker and Miller are able to give a voice to women that have often been silenced in ‘classic’ myths: Briseis and Circe. The texts foreground the complexity of their female protagonists by relating their stories to the patriarchal world surrounding them. Building onto this, both texts reflect on mythmaking and storytelling on an overarching level, thereby offering us a subtle critique on the way myths have been written and read in the past. Strikingly, scholars have recently studied these feminist mythmakings as mere ‘rewritings’ or ‘fictionalisations’ of Homer’s ‘classics’. The effect is a limiting analysis in which the true intertextuality of the stories gets lost in a restricting methodology. In this thesis, I propose a new way to analyze these mythmakings in an appropriate and respectful way, by using the concept of ‘mosaic mythmaking’.Show less
The alteration of representation in young readers’ editions of Nathaniel Philbrick's "In the Heart of the Sea" and Mary Lee Shetterly's "Hidden Figures".
A theoretical debate between three thinkers on the future of literature in the age of new media shows there is dissent regarding whether literature’s narrative and new media’s database forms can...Show moreA theoretical debate between three thinkers on the future of literature in the age of new media shows there is dissent regarding whether literature’s narrative and new media’s database forms can productively coexist or that the latter will supplant the former. To make sense of these different views, this thesis will consider the question of how reading skills change on the basis of interrelations between literature and new media. The case-study, David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, seems to have a proto-database form while being essentially narrative. It may, therefore, be considered a hybrid between old and new media as well as a reflection of media-literature evolution itself. The novel builds a signification structure into the text that directs the reading direction nonlinearly, allowing for a plurality of voices and ways of looking at the world. Interpreted nonlinearly, Infinite Jest offers an allegory not for reading but precisely for the impossibility thereof. It self-consciously reflects on postmodernism and, specifically, its central thematic of illegibility: it is a novel self-aware of its own impossibility. Infinite Jest diagnoses the illegibility of texts in the age of postmodernism, where one can no longer rely on clear-cut strategies for reading but must employ a creativity in learning how to read as a production rather than a discovery of meaning. Novels like Infinite Jest, it appears, serve as mental practice for new media reading, which requires the reader to switch between reading strategies, or what I coin the modulation proposal, to deal with the phenomenon of ‘information overload.’ Infinite Jest shows that hybridization of narrative and database, or of literature and new media, is a viable – and, hopefully, long-term – possibility for the literature of the future. Literature is right now in the process of adapting itself by borrowing elements from new, digital media, and, re-inventing itself as a form of art that transcends the medium of the book, i.e., literature becomes transmedial. To stay relevant in the age of digital media, literature needs to reinvent itself time and again.Show less
