Matching Items (3)
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- All Subjects: American literature--Themes, motives.
- All Subjects: Translation Studies
- Creators: Sadowski-Smith, Claudia
Description
From Frankenstein to District 9: Ecocritical Readings of Classic and Contemporary Fiction and Film demonstrates how American studies methodologies, ecological literary criticism, and environmental justice theory provide both time-tested and new analytical tools for reading texts from transnational perspectives. Recently, American literary scholars have been responding to calls for collective interdisciplinary response to widening social disparities and species collapses caused by climate change in the new epoch recently being termed "the anthropocene." In response, I analyze canonical texts, such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in juxtaposition with Neill Blomkamp's South African science fiction thriller District 9 and contemporary US American novels such as Toni Morrison's Sula, William Faulkner's "The Bear" in Go Down, Moses and Richard Power's Generosity and The Echo Maker, to show how writers, filmmakers, and academics have been calling attention to dramatic climate events that consequently challenge the public to rethink the relationships among human beings to other species, and to ecological systems of low predictability, high variability, and frequent extremes. Rather than focusing solely on the "human," I examine how the relationships and livelihoods of multi-species communities shape and are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces. As a whole, this dissertation seeks to make abstract, often intangible global patterns and concepts accessible by providing models for what I call "readings in the anthropocene" or re-readings of classic and contemporary texts and film that offer insights into changing human behavior and suggesting alternative management practices of local and global commons as well as opportunities to imagine how to live in and beyond the anthropocene.
ContributorsTurner, Kyndra (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Lussier, Mark (Committee member) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation examines U. S. American intergenerational witnesses to the Holocaust, particularly how addressees turned addressors maintain an ethical obligation to First Generation witnesses while creating an affective relation to this history for new generations. In response to revisionism and the incommunicability of the Holocaust, a focus on (accurate) First Generation testimony emerged that marginalizes that of intergenerational witnesses. The risk of such a position is that it paralyzes language, locking the addressee into a movement always into the past. Using examples of intergenerational witnesses (moving from close to more distant relationships), this project argues that there is a possibility for ethical intergenerational response. There are two major discussion arcs that the work follows: self-reflexivity and the use of the Banality of Evil as a theme. Self-reflexivity in intergenerational witnessing calls attention to the role of the author as transgenerational witness, an act that does not seek to appropriate the importance or position of the Holocaust survivor because it calls attention to a subjective site in relation to the survivor and the communities of memory created within the text. The other major discussion arc moves from traditional depictions of the Banality of Evil to ones that challenge the audience to consider the way evil is conceptualized after the Holocaust and its implications in contemporary life. In these ways, intergenerational witnesses move from addressee to addressors, continuing to stress the importance of this history through the imperative to pass Holocaust testimony onward into the future.
ContributorsDean, Sarah C (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Reyes, Angelita (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The work of one of the most prominent German Turkish authors, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, is well known for its multilingual strategies. Her collection of short stories Mutterzunge (1990) is praised for its strategic use of literal translation to convey the linguistic hybridity of cultures that emerged following twentieth century migration from Turkey to Germany. Özdamar points to the impossibility of a homogenous language by creating bilingual neologisms and by referencing Turkish language reforms. While Mutterzunge's use of translation has been well researched, the actual practices shaping the work's translations into other languages and the reception of these translations have remained underexplored. This thesis considers how Mutterzunge’s multilingual qualities are treated in English- and Turkish-language translations, and how the receiving cultures' relationship to migration and multiculturality impact their reception. This project argues that while the English translation sacrifices many of Mutterzunge's creative neologisms to introduce Turkish German cultures to English-speaking audiences through analogy to migration from Mexico, the Turkish translation reiterates the Turkish language reform’s attempt to create a "purer" language, while successfully rendering Özdamar’s neologisms in a context where Turkey is becoming an immigrant-receiving country. As the two translations aim to acquaint their audiences with a multilingual text and the migrant culture it references, they are shaped by experiences of migration and ideas about national identity in the host nations. The thesis concludes that both translations signal a reluctance to fully represent Özdamar’s multilingualism, which points to the need for further conversations on the practices of translation of literary texts that incorporate multilingual strategies.
ContributorsArslan, Ayse Kevser (Author) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Thesis advisor) / Johnson, Christopher (Committee member) / Sanchez, Marta (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021