English (Public Texts)

This thesis creates an adaptation of act five, scene three of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus that reshapes the play by focusing on female empowerment through the character Lavinia. Specifically, by using other Shakespearean characters' dialogue that can speak towards her situation, I have written a monologue and stage directions for Lavinia. The same patriarchal superstructures which existed in the West during the time of Shakespeare and at the time of the play's setting—and which still exist today—ensure that Lavinia remains silenced. Through my adaptation, I aim to challenge these structures in a meaningful way by returning both voice and agency to Lavinia.

Author Keywords: Adaptation, Agency, Metamorphosis, Patriarchy, Revenge, Voice

This thesis considers the fanfiction genres of slash-fiction, and Alpha/Beta/Omega fiction through an analysis of fandom's embedded gift economy structures. Previous research on fanfiction and fandom structures have often characterized the gift economy nature of these spaces as countercultural and as separate from the frequent exploitation inherent in economic-based systems. There has been less attention paid to considering the potential disruptions that can come with unregulated and large-scale sharing. This thesis undertakes a critical discourse analysis of Alpha/Beta/Omega slash-fiction with a focus on commodity fetishism to reveal how the subgenre's relationship with the fanfiction gift economy complicates and at times counters the conception of these spaces as a 'queer utopia.' The purpose of this research is to dismantle traditional archetypes within Alpha/Beta/Omega fanfiction by exploring how male Omegan characters become fetishized cultural commodity objects internally through interactions with Alpha characters and externally through the desires of fanfiction readers and writers.

Author Keywords: Alpha/Beta/Omega, Commodity Fetishism, Fanfiction, Gift Economy, Queer Theory, Slash-fiction

This thesis presents a critical history of stand-up comedy alongside rhetorical analyses of specific stand-up routines and performances to argue for stand-up's efficacy as a therapeutic artform. Through analysis of the history, function, and content of satire, this thesis presents stand-up comedy as an artform utilized for more than just simple laughter. Stand-up comedy, as a form and genre, provides the unique ability to engage with difficult subject matter, traumatic experiences, and offense for the benefit of both listener and audience in a way that subverts, therapizes, and equalizes instances of discrimination, trauma, and denigration.

Author Keywords: Abjection, Offense, Satire, Stand-up Comedy, Therapy

This study is an attempt to look at how orality plays a role in modern society to move people to action in a social engineering process. By examining the theories for the formation of publics as outlined by Jurgen Habermas and Michael Warner, I argue for the existence of an oral public and further show that it can be engineered with some of the tools provided. This theoretical foundation provides a pathway for a thorough examination of orality as a tool for social engineering and shows how the practices moved the people in the past. In this study, I posit that the oral traditions are still alive and well in modern times and still function as a tool for moving people to social action. To achieve this, orality makes use of popular culture. This study examines elements of popular culture with a view to unearthing the presence of oral modes and how they are still carrying on the same function of social engineering in a modern society. This study concludes by positioning orality as a relevant tool for social engineering in modern Nigerian society and affirms that it is still relevant in the areas of politics, literature and cultural productions with possibilities yet untapped in the area of digital technology.

Author Keywords: Nigeria, Orality, Popular culture, Publics, Public Sphere, Social Engineering

This three-part history explores Web 2.0's ability to make music products a collaborative, ongoing creative process that is reflective of early twentieth century live-music publics, where the realization of a performance was actualized by performers together with their audience in a shared physical space. By extension, I follow the changing dynamic of the producer/consumer relationship as they transitioned through different media and formats that altered their respective roles in music making. This study considers the role that rock ideology, specifically that of the 'indie-rock' habitus, plays in shaping both a rock artist's desired image and a fan-base's expectations. How rock musicians use the internet reveals their own views on authenticity in recorded music and the extent to which they are willing to participate in a public with their audience. Primary case studies used are: Neil Young, Dave Bidini, Beck Hansen and Joel Plaskett.

Keywords: popular music; indie-rock; Web 2.0; rock music collaboration; fan participation; publics; authenticity; habitus; Neil Young; Dave Bidini; Beck Hansen; Joel Plaskett; Song Reader; Scrappy Happiness; Canadian music

Author Keywords: authenticity, fan participation, indie-rock habitus, popular music, rock music collaboration, Web 2.0

ABSTRACT

Women as Gifts and the Triple Hecate Myth in Shakespeare's

Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline

Women are placed into sexual roles by the patriarchal system in which we live. Gayle Rubin terms this a "sex/gender system" and explains that within this system women are exchanged as "gifts" between men to form kinship ties. The sexual roles this system creates are embodied in the "Triple Hecate myth." Hecate was the goddess of witchcraft in Ancient Greece and was known to have three faces: Maiden, Nymph and Crone. The Maiden is in girlhood and the label is applied to any woman before she becomes sexually active. The Nymph is a sexually active woman who lives within the norms of society. A sexually active woman who lives outside those norms is a Whore. A Crone is a woman who has passed menopause. She is seen as either a wise elder or a wicked stepmother figure.

In Shakespeare's plays Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, and Cymbeline, the female protagonists Cleopatra, Imogen and Cressida are all trying to control their own destinies and rise above or manipulate this patriarchal system of control. These three women are travelling through the "Triple Hecate Myth." Cleopatra begins a Whore and ends a Nymph, Imogen begins a Maiden and ends a Nymph, and Cressida begins a Maiden and ends a Whore. They each also problematize the "gift" exchange system either by attempting to self-exchange (Cleopatra and Imogen) or by being exchanged multiple times (Cressida).

Keywords: William Shakespeare, Triple Hecate Myth, Gift Exchange, Gayle Rubin, Cymbeline, Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, Feminist Criticism, Classical Studies

Author Keywords: Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, Gayle Rubin, Shakespeare, Triple Hecate, Troilus and Cressida

This thesis proposes that Benjamin Britten's 'Peter Grimes' leads its audience toward actively constructing an attitude toward its maskless protagonist. Grimes's tragedy results from the social construction of his character from ambiguous and unseen actions. Utilizing the theories of Hannah Arendt and Carl Jung, this thesis proposes that Grimes may have resisted tragedy by constructing a public persona for himself. This thesis analyses the opera's music and narrative according to the difference between Grimes's lack of a public persona and the Borough- members' construction of a mask for him. A central contention of the thesis is that as another element of Britten's persona, Peter Grimes permitted the composer's entrance into the public sphere, despite his private inclinations and illegal sexuality. Like the opera's drama, the opera's "Sea Interludes" reveals the tragedy resulting from the failure to construct an attitude toward the public world. These "Sea Interludes" work alongside the opera's drama to induce the audience into a common perception of the opera's whole. Through ironic relation to the opera's musical and narrative parts, Benjamin Britten induces his audience's construction of personae, thereby bringing himself and them into a shared public realm.

Author Keywords: Benjamin Britten, E. M. Forster, English Opera, Montagu Slater, Peter Grimes, W. H. Auden

This thesis examines how food, culture and identity are linked to the idea of "home." Through a reading of oral narratives produced on the YouTube channel "ShowMetheCurry," I investigate how presenters Anuja and Hetal "write back" from a diasporic space in Texas, to the YouTube global public, and how food and cuisine, even in the age of globalization can be problematic in terms of representation of identities, work and space. I explore how the YouTube videos operate as a heterotopia, as what is presented to the audience in this medium is an embedding of spaces. The space that is projected through "ShowMetheCurry," that of Anuja and Hetal's own home kitchen, is then projected and viewed within the audiences' own spaces, in various locations around the world. What connects these spaces is an interest in cooking, and a longing to satiate culinary nostalgia.

Author Keywords: Affect, Culinary nostalgia, Discourse analysis, Food culture, South Asian Diaspora, YouTube

Two dominant narratives emerging throughout the war were the national narrative––that is, the narrative of the war as articulated by the British nation via texts such as political speeches, recruitment posters, and popular music–– and the poetic narrative––that is, the narrative of the war emerging from poets, specifically battlefront poets for the sake of this thesis. One hundred years since World War One, these two narratives are often conceptualized as mutually exclusive, even antithetical to one another. This thesis brings these diverse narratives into conversation with one another by investigating how they both draw on the same rhetorics and yet use these rhetorics to differing ends. Interestingly, the rhetorics employed by both narratives throughout the war endure in contemporary remembrance practices in Britain today. By investigating how each narrative draws on and employs the same rhetorics, this thesis both contextualizes and complexifies contemporary interpretations of contemporary remembrance practices.

Author Keywords: Battlefront Poetry , Britain, Narrative, Remembrance, Rhetoric, World War One

This thesis examines what the term "transgender narrative" represents at this particular time and location. I do this by examining various methods of transgender storytelling through different forms of media production, including autobiography, film, novels, and online platforms such as Tumblr and YouTube. In chapter one, I look at the production of novels and the value system by which they are judged ("gender capital") in transgender publics and counterpublics. In chapter two, I examine the history of the autobiography, along with the medical history closely associated with transgender identity and bodily transformation. The third chapter examines notions of violence and memorial behind the deaths of transgender people and the ways in which certain political revolutions are formed within a counterpublic. I deconstruct varying notions of identity, authorship, and cultural production and critically examine what it means to be transgender and what it means to tell stories about transgender people. I will conclude with how these stories are being shaped through social media to become more innovative and move away from the rigid value system of gender capital previously mentioned.

Author Keywords: autobiography, gender, sex, social media, transgender, transsexual