Matching Items (11)
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- All Subjects: Space
- All Subjects: War in literature
- Creators: Kovalcik, Richard
- Creators: Clarke, Deborah
Description
This dissertation analyzes contemporary American literature, which includes novels, graphic novels, film, and television of the last forty years, to deconstruct the critical relationship between lived space, institutional power, and trauma. It examines literary representations of traumatic moments in recent American history--the attacks on the World Trade Center, Hurricane Katrina, the emergence of the Homeland Security state, and the introduction of the "new metropolis"--to demonstrate that collective trauma at the turn of the century is very much a product of the individual's complex relationship to the state and its institutional auxiliaries. As many philosophers and social critics have argued, institutional forces in contemporary America often deprive individuals of active political engagement through processes of narrative production, and this study discusses how literature both represents and simulates the traumatic consequences of this encounter. Looking to theories on urban, domestic, and textual space, this dissertation explores and problematizes the political and psychological dimensions of space, demonstrating how trauma is enacted through space and how individuals may utilize space and exploit narrative to achieve critical distance from institutional power. Literature as a narrative medium presents vital opportunities both for exposing the machinery of institutional power and for generating positions against the narratives produced by the state.
ContributorsPattison, Dale (Author) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Ayanna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines contemporary U.S. women writing about war, with primarily women subjects and protagonists, from 1991-2013, in fiction, memoir, and media. The writers situate women at the center of war texts and privilege their voices as authoritative speakers in war, whether as civilians and soldiers trying to survive or indigenous women preparing for the possibility of war. I argue that these authors are rewriting scripts of war to reflect gendered experiences and opening new ways of thinking about war. Women Rewriting Scripts of War argues that Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead juxtaposes an indigenous Story concept against a white industrialized national “Truth,” and indigenous women characters will resort to war if needed to oppose it. Silko’s and the other texts here challenge readers to unseat assumptions about the sovereignty of the U.S. and other countries, about the fixedness of gender, of capitalism, and of how humans relate to each other‒and how we should. I argue in Essay 3 that the script of “the body” or “the soldier” in military service can be expanded by moving toward language and concepts from feminist and queer theory and spectrums of gender and sexuality. This can contribute to positive change for all military members. In each of the texts, there are some similarities in connections with others. Connections enable solidarity for change, possibilities for healing, and survival; indeed, without connections with others to work together, survival is not possible. Changes to established economic structures become necessary for women in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible; I argue that women engaging in alternative modes of economy subvert the dominant economic constraints, gender hierarchies, and social isolation during and after war in the Congo. In Essay 5, I explore two fictional texts about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Helen Benedict's novel Sand Queen and Katey Schultz’s short story collection Flashes of War. The connections in these women’s texts about war are not idealized, and they function as the antithesis to the fragmentation and isolation of postmodern texts.
This dissertation examines contemporary U.S. women writing about war, with primarily women subjects and protagonists, from 1991-2013, in fiction, memoir, and media. The writers situate women at the center of war texts and privilege their voices as authoritative speakers in war, whether as civilians and soldiers trying to survive or indigenous women preparing for the possibility of war. I argue that these authors are rewriting scripts of war to reflect gendered experiences and opening new ways of thinking about war. Women Rewriting Scripts of War argues that Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead juxtaposes an indigenous Story concept against a white industrialized national “Truth,” and indigenous women characters will resort to war if needed to oppose it. Silko’s and the other texts here challenge readers to unseat assumptions about the sovereignty of the U.S. and other countries, about the fixedness of gender, of capitalism, and of how humans relate to each other‒and how we should. I argue in Essay 3 that the script of “the body” or “the soldier” in military service can be expanded by moving toward language and concepts from feminist and queer theory and spectrums of gender and sexuality. This can contribute to positive change for all military members. In each of the texts, there are some similarities in connections with others. Connections enable solidarity for change, possibilities for healing, and survival; indeed, without connections with others to work together, survival is not possible. Changes to established economic structures become necessary for women in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible; I argue that women engaging in alternative modes of economy subvert the dominant economic constraints, gender hierarchies, and social isolation during and after war in the Congo. In Essay 5, I explore two fictional texts about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Helen Benedict's novel Sand Queen and Katey Schultz’s short story collection Flashes of War. The connections in these women’s texts about war are not idealized, and they function as the antithesis to the fragmentation and isolation of postmodern texts.
ContributorsStamper, Cambria A (Author) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Hogue, Cynthia (Committee member) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation is a study of place and the ways that place plays a role in the stories we tell about ourselves and the ways we interact with the world. It is also the study of a moment in time and how a moment can impact what came before and all that follows. By taking on the subject of 1920s anglophone modernism in France I explore the way this particular time and place drew upon the past and impacted the future of literary culture. Post World War I France serves as a fluid social, political, and cultural space and the moment is one of plural modernisms. I argue that the interwar period was a transnational moment that laid the groundwork for the kind of global interactions that are both positively and negatively impacting the world today. I maintain that the critical work connected to the influence of 1920s France on Modernism deserves a more interstitial analysis than we have seen, one that expressly challenges the national frameworks that lead to a monolithic focus on the specific identity politics attached to race, gender, class and sexuality. I promote instead a consideration of the articulations between all of these factors by expanding, connecting and providing contingencies for the difference within the unity and the similarities that exist beyond it. I consider the way that the idea, history, social culture and geography of France work as sources of literary innovation and as spaces of literary fantasy for three diverse anglophone modernist writers: Jean Rhys, Claude McKay and William Faulkner. Their interaction with the place and the people make for a complex web of articulated difference that is the very core of transnational modernism. By considering their use of place in modernist fiction, I question the centrality of Paris as a modernist topos that too often replaces any broader understanding of France as a diverse cultural and topographical space, and I question the nation-centric logic of modernist criticism that fails to recognize the complex ways that language in general and the English language in particular function in this particular expatriate modernist moment.
ContributorsDye, Dorothy Jane (Author) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Canovas, Frédéric (Committee member) / Mallot, Jr., Jack (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Jason Bryant Queering Home: Domestic Space and Sexuality in Postmodern American Fiction This dissertation explores narratives of homosexuals and trans men and women occupying domestic spaces, discerning the ways that “home” shapes understandings about sexuality and examining the ways that understandings of sexuality shape how domestic spaces are occupied. Queer artists and intellectuals have deconstructed the legacy of normativity that clings to the metaphor of the domestic realm. Queering Home argues that writers have used the discursive concept of home to cultivate sociopolitical communities (Audre Lorde, Zami) while also insisting upon material spaces of shelter and comfort for individuals queered by gender performance, sexual orientation, and resultant adverse economic conditions (Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues). Two novels, Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina and Mike Albo's Hornito, challenge the coming-of-age tradition of narrating childhood/adolescence through the redeeming prism of the confident, queer adult; in particular, these novels trouble the problematic notion of domesticated maturation as a heteronormative condition that continues to cling to much contemporary American lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) politics. The third chapter examines Marilyn Hacker's sonnet collection, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons in correspondence with Carl Phillips's collection, Cortège, as they queer the concept of domestic bliss, the goal toward which romantic partners are “supposed” to be committed. Hacker and Phillips revise the same-sex couple as a processing of gay ways of life, which resists positing normative, married futures for lesbians and homosexuals. Finally, the study investigates Terrence McNally's play, Lips Together, Teeth Apart and a series of still life paintings by Joey Terrill for their depiction of narratives of domestic spaces (pools, open-concept design, medicine cabinets), which condition the subjectification and desubjectification of gay male sexuality and domesticity in the era of HIV/AIDS. Throughout, this dissertation draws energy by challenging the “given” and “inevitable” heteronorms that condition domesticity, sexuality, and space, demonstrating how late twentieth century writers and artists have queered the home.
ContributorsBryant, Jason (Author) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Sturges, Robert (Committee member) / Bebout, Lee (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This thesis paper outlines Nova-six company, an honors thesis project conducted through the Founders Lab program at Arizona State University. Nova-six is a multimedia company centered around the space industry. Nova-six’s mission is to ignite Generation Z’s passion for space by reimagining it through the lens of contemporary culture. To this end, Nova-six has developed its brand to be a space-themed streetwear, pop art, and entertainment venture. Through its innovative approach, Nova-six aims to transform the space industry's narrative, making it a central part of today's cultural conversations and inspiring a new generation to explore the final frontier.
ContributorsEverett, Ryan (Author) / Reynolds, TJ (Co-author) / Gomez, Dominic (Co-author) / Kovalcik, Richard (Co-author) / Guttilla, Joshua (Co-author) / Byrne, Jared (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2024-05
ContributorsGuttilla, Joshua (Author) / Everett, Ryan (Co-author) / Gomez, Dominic (Co-author) / Kovalcik, Richard (Co-author) / Reynolds, TJ (Co-author) / Byrne , Jared (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
This thesis paper outlines Nova-six company, an honors thesis project conducted through the Founder’s Lab program at Arizona State University. Nova-six is a multimedia company centered around the space industry. Nova-six’s mission is to ignite Generation Z’s passion for space by reimagining it through the lens of contemporary culture. To this end, Nova-six has developed its brand to be a space-themed streetwear, pop art, and entertainment venture. Through its innovative approach, Nova-six aims to transform the space industry's narrative, making it a central part of today's cultural conversations and inspiring a new generation to explore the final frontier.
ContributorsGuttilla, Joshua (Author) / Everett, Ryan (Co-author) / Gomez, Dominic (Co-author) / Kovalcik, Richard (Co-author) / Reynolds, TJ (Co-author) / Byrne, Jared (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor)
Created2024-05
ContributorsGuttilla, Joshua (Author) / Everett, Ryan (Co-author) / Gomez, Dominic (Co-author) / Kovalcik, Richard (Co-author) / Reynolds, TJ (Co-author) / Byrne , Jared (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor)
Created2024-05
ContributorsGuttilla, Joshua (Author) / Everett, Ryan (Co-author) / Gomez, Dominic (Co-author) / Kovalcik, Richard (Co-author) / Reynolds, TJ (Co-author) / Byrne , Jared (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor)
Created2024-05
ContributorsGuttilla, Joshua (Author) / Everett, Ryan (Co-author) / Gomez, Dominic (Co-author) / Kovalcik, Richard (Co-author) / Reynolds, TJ (Co-author) / Byrne , Jared (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Department of Management and Entrepreneurship (Contributor)
Created2024-05