Year: 2021, 2021
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Name(s): Creator (cre): Hines, Kelly Dorothea, Thesis advisor (ths): Hollinger, Veronica, Degree committee member (dgc): Junyk, Ihor, Degree committee member (dgc): Egan, Kelly, Degree committee member (dgc): Cecchetto, David, Degree committee member (dgc): Howes, Moira, Degree granting institution (dgg): Trent University Abstract: <p>Untitled (dissertation 4.2) offers a performative take on the political implications of digital archives. I argue that technological developments and their increasing ubiquity has not resulted in more reliable archives; it has facilitated the exacerbation of what Jacques Derrida calls mal d'archive—or archive fever—which refers to the institutionally supported passion to preserve… more
Year: 2019, 2019
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Name(s): Creator (cre): Thursby, Laura, Thesis advisor (ths): Hollinger, Veronica, Degree committee member (dgc): Bordo, Jonathan, Degree committee member (dgc): Dunaway, Finis, Degree committee member (dgc): Lepselter, Susan, Degree granting institution (dgg): Trent University Abstract: <p>This dissertation offers a cultural analysis of UFOs and extraterrestrials in the United States. In it I look at what I call real aliens — extraterrestrials believed to be real and interacting with humans on Earth. Beliefs in real aliens are often denigrated and dismissed in official discourse, yet they continue to not only persist, but thrive, in American society. Hence, this… more
Year: 2019, 2019
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Name(s): Creator (cre): Affleck, Sara Jane, Thesis advisor (ths): Hollinger, Veronica, Degree committee member (dgc): Junyk, Ihor, Degree committee member (dgc): Pendleton Jimenez, Karleen, Degree committee member (dgc): Chivers, Sally, Degree committee member (dgc): Verwaayen, Kim, Degree granting institution (dgg): Trent University Abstract: <p>Parody has been a strategy within cultural production since the ancient Greeks: "paraodia" referred to a song sung alongside the main narrative thread of a dramatic work; the prefix "para-" also signifies "against." In A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-century Art Forms, Linda Hutcheon offers this core definition: parody is "a form of… more
Year: 2018, 2018
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Name(s): Creator (cre): Ingwersen, Moritz Andree, Thesis advisor (ths): Hollinger, Veronica, Thesis advisor (ths): Berressem, Hanjo, Degree committee member (dgc): Junyk, Ihor, Degree committee member (dgc): Holdsworth, David, Degree committee member (dgc): Pethes, Nicolas, Degree committee member (dgc): Milburn, Colin, Degree granting institution (dgg): Trent University Abstract: <p>This dissertation presents the work of the American science fiction writer Neal Stephenson as a case study of mediations between literature and science by mobilizing its resonances with contemporary science studies and media theory. Tracing the historical and thematic trajectory of his consecutively published novels Snow Crash (1992), The Diamond Age; or, A Young Lady's Illustrated… more
Year: 2016, 2016
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>I have two goals. One, to offer new insights into Vienna Actionism (VA) and their notorious performances, through Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's notion of the body without organs (BwO); and two, not simply to provide descriptions of the Vienna Actionists' performances, but also to write what I am calling a thesis without organs. </p><p>Documents from the Vienna… more
Year: 2016, 2016
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>The 1980s in the United States have come into focus as years of extensive ideological and socioeconomic fracture. A conservative movement arose to counter the progressive gains of previous decades, neoliberalism became the nation's economic mantra, and détente was jettisoned in favour of military build-up. Such developments materialized out of a multitude of conflicts, a cultural… more
Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Name(s): Creator (cre): Bordun, Troy Michael, Thesis advisor (ths): Panagia, Davide, Degree committee member (dgc): McLachlan, Ian, Degree committee member (dgc): Stavro, Elaine, Degree committee member (dgc): Hollinger, Veronica, Degree granting institution (dgg): Trent University Abstract: <p>This dissertation re-evaluates theories of genre and spectatorship in light of a critic-defined tendency in recent art cinema, coined extreme cinema. It argues that the films of Mexican director Carlos Reygadas and French director Catherine Breillat expand our generic classifications and, through the re-organization of the visual presentation of genre-specific clichés and devices, their… more
Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This three-part dissertation will consider both theoretical and practical implications that Baruch Spinoza's (1632-1677) immanent philosophical system holds for developing a contemporary "pedagogy of renaturalization." One of the intents of this thesis is to draw out how "intellectual slut shaming" is a naturalized part of neoliberal subjectivity. </p><p… more
Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This thesis examines a specific figure that appears throughout contemporary Japanese detective fiction (across different media), which I have termed the Shaman detective. A liminal figure that combines Japanese folk cosmologies with contemporary detective work, the Shaman detective is at once similar to, yet separate from, western postmodernist detective fiction. Invested in narratives… more
Year: 2015, 2015
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This thesis is a critical response to Evgeny Morozov's article proclaiming the death of the cyberflâneur. Suspicious of the superficiality of his argument, I developed a practico-theoretical project to prove that the cyberflâneur is not dead but alive – or, if it were dead, to rescue it from its grave and bring it back to life. In the course of my response to Morozov, I develop a… more
Year: 2014, 2014
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Name(s): Creator (cre): Ellis, Cameron Alexander James, Thesis advisor (ths): Hollinger, Veronica, Degree committee member (dgc): Eddy, Charmaine, Degree committee member (dgc): Panagia, Davide, Degree committee member (dgc): Stavro, Elaine, Degree committee member (dgc): Pero, Allan, Degree granting institution (dgg): Trent University Abstract: <p>This dissertation utilizes the psychoanalytic theories of French psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva as a lens through which to read the novels of American author Samuel R. Delany. I argue that concepts proper to Kristeva's work--namely abjection and/or the abject--can provide a way to think what it might mean to be utopian in the 21st century. Delany's novels are received… more
Year: 2014, 2014
Member of: Trent University Graduate Thesis Collection
Abstract: <p>This thesis is a theoretical study of Facebook's surveillance project. It begins by taking one of the predominant organizational forms of modern surveillance, Foucaultian panopticism, and examining the ways in which its form, along with Foucault's broader model of the disciplinary society, is realized, remixed and extended by Facebook's virtual form. Following this… more