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
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
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 paper facilitates a conversation between a classical Chinese Zen Buddhist story and contemporary French feminist theory. Hélène Cixous' work is used as a mirror to explore the significance of...Show moreThis paper facilitates a conversation between a classical Chinese Zen Buddhist story and contemporary French feminist theory. Hélène Cixous' work is used as a mirror to explore the significance of the exceptional appearance of a nude female body and a celebrated vagina in this Zen text.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 explored the Afropessimism framework for examining the dynamics of race and racial inequality in the United States and Brazilian contexts and its potential for advancing racial justice...Show moreThis thesis explored the Afropessimism framework for examining the dynamics of race and racial inequality in the United States and Brazilian contexts and its potential for advancing racial justice efforts. It examined and answered the following questions: How does the critical perspective of Afropessimism impact the experiences and identities of individuals of African descent in the Americas, specifically in the U.S. and Brazil? How does Afropessimism critique the effectiveness of the human rights framework in securing racial justice for individuals within the African diaspora? To examine the translatability of Afropessimism to a different cultural context other than that of the U.S., I researched whether this theoretical framework could also accurately explain the historical and contemporary experiences of Black individuals in Brazil. These questions aimed to evaluate the extent to which Afropessimism, departing from other racial theories, such as intersectionality, questions the efficacy of the human rights framework in transforming society and its social institutions, as a means of irrevocably achieving racial justice.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 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
In this thesis I will give a reading of the films Big Eyes (Tim Burton, 2014) and Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009), in which authorship is addressed or at stake. Burton’s film is about the female...Show moreIn this thesis I will give a reading of the films Big Eyes (Tim Burton, 2014) and Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009), in which authorship is addressed or at stake. Burton’s film is about the female painter Margaret Keane and Campion’s film is about the last three years of the life of the poet John Keats (1795-1821) For my analyses I will use Foucault and Barthes’ theories of the author as starting point because their theories are, especially in certain circumstances, such as in the case of female authorship, still relevant today. The overall research question of my thesis is: ‘when or in what circumstances are the theories of Foucault and Barthes relevant, and when are they not relevant?’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".
Recent developments in adaptation studies have found influence in poststructuralist studies, and prioritise a non-hierarchical, open approach to adaptations, rather than the previous comparative...Show moreRecent developments in adaptation studies have found influence in poststructuralist studies, and prioritise a non-hierarchical, open approach to adaptations, rather than the previous comparative approaches that determined the framework for adaptation studies. This new perspective, in line with the poststructuralist de-emphasis of the figure of the literary author, diminishes the role of the literary author in the meaning of a literary text. This allows the adaptation to be examined in relation to the adapted text. Which aids the acknowledgement of their interconnection, without discrediting the adaptation, and encourages the examination of the respective cultural and social contexts of the adapted text, and the adaptation. However, images of literary authors return throughout pop culture, even in cinematic adaptations. This thesis is concerned with the portrayal of literary authors in cinematic adaptations of their literary works. In relation to Barthes' 'The Death of the Author' and other theories on literary authorship, this thesis examines the potential function of a representation of the literary author in an adaptation of their literary text.Show less
This thesis focuses on African American hip-hop music. How does this music form produce a connection between black people and how does it create a community? Hip-hop music has a performative...Show moreThis thesis focuses on African American hip-hop music. How does this music form produce a connection between black people and how does it create a community? Hip-hop music has a performative function in producing a collective identity based on race, and now that new generations of African Americans are growing up in a world steeped in hip-hop culture, it is important to try and understand this performativity. How does hip-hop music produce a construct of blackness? And how is this performative function complicated by the many contradictions in hip-hop: commercial hip-hop balances on a fine line between emancipating African Americans and reproducing negative stereotypes of African Americans.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
