Bruusgaard, Emily

This thesis examines contradictions in approaches to fashion cataloging and exhibition by considering how the fashion artifact is used as physical evidence for public memory of the past. As a memorial practice and timekeeper, fashion demands a complex cultural understanding of artistic production, aging, and history. How does this understanding of fashion as a cultural index and narrative challenge our knowledge of history and the problems inherent in trying to produce a historical narrative through cloth? Where do we fall short in dress reconstructions and our understanding of time and aging through approaches to fashion and dressing? How do these considerations challenge cultural attitudes toward fashion's role in helping understand death and aging in the larger cultural lexicon? By addressing fashion's relationship to time and what might be termed the death aspect of dress as connected to bodies from the past, we allow for a less biased approach to historic fashion that will account for more regional, communal, and individual tastes in dress. This method of inquiry permits a more balanced understanding of dressing ideals across socioeconomic levels regarding garment production and reproduction. Continually addressing the personal in fashion reinforces the unique nature of each garment and its relationship with the body as part of fashion's corporeal register. Keywords: Fashion Artifact, Garment Production, Garment Reproduction, Reconstruction, Corporeal, Embodiment, Eastern Time, Historicism, Public Memory, Memorial, Aging, Western Time

Author Keywords: Corporeal, Embodiment, Fashion Artifact, Garment Reproduction, Historicism, Public Memory

In this thesis I argue that Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme Book (1872) disrupts conventional narratives of the idealized maternal role in the Victorian era, "the angel in the house" by confronting and giving a voice to the often overlooked realities of maternal suffering. Rossetti accomplishes this by fostering the conversation regarding the challenges inherent in motherhood. Sing-Song has been dismissed by critics as inappropriate for its intended child audience. However, such assessments rely on outdated assumptions and fail to recognize the intention behind the poetry collection. The subtle coding of the rhymes for a maternal audience has largely been overlooked. Rossetti deliberately represents the psychological and emotional complexities of motherhood, offering a more realistic portrayal of the mental health challenges that may accompany the maternal experience. In turn, Sing-Song challenges the idealized mother figure of the Victorian era and represents a more nuanced understanding of motherhood.

Keywords: motherhood, idealized, maternal mental health, the angel in the house, infant death

Author Keywords: idealized, infant death, maternal mental health, motherhood, the angel in the house

Through an exploration of shared stories, hauntings and the sea, this study outlines the idea that an ideological shift is a necessary first step to address the impact of colonialism in the publishing industry. This thesis draws sustained attention to the ways in which colonialism has an inextricable material effect on the publishing industry, and focuses on the myriad ways this past material and ideological holdovers shape the frameworks of book production. The vestiges of colonialism continue to be carried forward as a constitutive element of the present, creating a complex situation of material forces and conditions that need to be negotiated to create a more inclusive and diverse literary landscape that accurately reflects the experiences and voices of marginalised communities.Referring to something both subtler and more apparent than reformation, this thesis argues that a shift in ideology is necessary to address the impact of colonialism on literary culture. The shift proposed by this thesis is inspired by the ocean, specifically the Caribbean Sea. As it invites a rethinking of traditional capitalist publishing practices by acknowledging the historical limitations and systemic inequalities at the emergence of postcolonial West Indian literature. This shift involves moving towards alternative literary production and study that are more generative, appreciative, and beneficial to minoritised groups whose histories make themselves known in the present, inscribed into our stories in an accumulation of tides.

Author Keywords: Hauntology, literary situation, Postcolonial literature, Tidalectics, West Indian Literature

This case study's fan fiction and its subsequent non-RPF romance novel version reveal a complex blend of the fan fiction, romance novel, intimatopia, pornography, slash fan fiction, Real Person Fan Fiction, and Men's Hockey Real Person Fan Fiction genres and subgenres. Intimatopia's ideological framework provides a specific method for the romance novel's reordering of self and society, as well as a description of the resulting ordered society and self. As analysis of the reader comments left on the Archive of Our Own fan fiction reveals, intimacy is also critical to the fan fiction's community, because the reader is driven to comment by the text's affective power. The relationship between the reader and the text is primary for the reader, whereas the author's primary aim is to seek an intimate relationship with their readers. There is a conceptual link between the literary and social contexts through their privileging of intimacy as a mode of interaction for the texts's characters, readers, and authors.

Author Keywords: Archive of Our Own, community, fan fiction, intimatopia, Men's Hockey Real Person Fan Fiction, romance novel