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A Comparative Analysis of the New African-American Narratives and Critical Voices of Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, Al Sharpton, and Patrisse Cullors.
Leššová, Júlia ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
The struggle against racism is as old as the United States itself. Although the Civil Rights movement accomplished a significant transformation of the social and political system, it left many things unresolved. For this reason, the main argument of this thesis is that the movement did not really end in the 1960s but still continues to this day. The method used is that of comparison, where I compare the present "new" movement, which spans from the 1970s, with the original one. In this sense, the thesis also focuses on three major activists from the original movement, Martin Luther King Jr, James Baldwin and Malcolm X, to further analyze the attitudes in the original movement and compare them with the current ones later. However, the main focus of the thesis is on four personas who made a significant contribution to the "new" Civil Rights Movement in the era starting from the 1970s and who can be considered as ones of many rightful representatives of it. Firstly, Toni Morrison and Angela Davis are two prominent writers who adapted writing as an instrument for their activism. In the late 20th century, the general readership rapidly changed. Both writers were able to take this opportunity immediately as they focused their writing on portraying the harsh realities of slavery, racism, and its impacts on...
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Between Mainstream and Avant-Garde Filmmaking: The French New Wave and the Illusion of Realism
Ilić, Dunja ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Vichnar, David (referee)
The thesis explores the French New Wave as a film school which made a break with classical filmmaking and became influential worldwide, but was then discarded as ideologically naïve in the politicized atmosphere before and after the year 1968. It aims to demonstrate that what allowed the New Wave to make groundbreaking changes in filmmaking, that is, what makes it avant-garde, is also what ultimately denies it this attribute: its concern for realism, an issue at the center of inquiries into the nature of film. The first chapter analyses the Wave's stylistic and ideological opposition to the Tradition of Quality in relation to the theory of André Bazin, the Wave's ideologue. The example of Chabrol's The Cousins shows the influence of Orson Welles's long takes and deep focuses which urge the spectator to judge him/herself, as in real life, the relations among characters, as opposed to the paternalizing editing devices of classical Hollywood and the Tradition of Quality. The second chapter analyses the Wave's most famous films, Truffaut's 400 Blows and Godard's Breathless, with the emphasis on the shift from Chabrol's formal realism to a psychological realism based in ambiguity, Bazin's key term. Breathless is understood as the Wave's avant-garde and a realist film which goes beyond realism. The third...
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(In)Sincere Authorship - Three Novels of Jeffrey Eugenides
Rydlová, Daniela ; Vichnar, David (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
Above anything else, New Sincerity is characterized by responding to postmodern irony, not in the form of its abandonment, but rather in its unmasking, critique, redeployment and transcendence. What Jeffrey Eugenides shares with New Sincerity authors is a critical treatment of the heritage of postmodernism. Balancing between postmodernist techniques and their transcendence, Eugenides writes about contemporary issues plaguing the American society (gender identity, mental health, the American dream, migration) and addresses the literary tradition of American fiction. However, his response to the literary tradition of postmodernism differs from the majority of New Sincerity writers. The New Sincerity's "manifesto," David Foster Wallace's "E Unibus Pluram," is an essay about fiction, but it is also a text about American television and culture. Eugenides' books by and large avoid commentary on popular culture, and their socio-political commentary is often found inadequate: their reflection of the legacy of Reaganomics within the Bush and Clinton administrations is oblique, as is their treatment of the many other issues symptomatic of the 1980s and 1990s: the spread of HIV/AIDS, the ubiquitous television culture and its gradual replacement in the digital age, information oversaturation and the looming...
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Reflections of the deleuzian "time-image" in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and of Alain Resnais
Konoreva, Evguenia ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Armand, Louis (referee)
During the twentieth century, cinematography matured into an independent and potent form of art. Film as a sequence of images caught in continuity presents a unique tool of capturing time; it allows the viewer to observe the manipulation of temporal and of spatial values, which before was not possible in the arts. Furthermore, the technical and aesthetic conceptualization of cinematography was evolutionarily developing during its short history and, according to Deleuze, saw a major break after Citizen Kane (1941)and most forcefully following the Second World War. This break resulted in the emergence of the so-called 'time-image', which in its essence reveals a radical alienation of the individual in contemporary society, but seeks to establish a new philosophy of space and time in a disorientated post-war world. The present analyses of the films chosen in this project aimed at revealing the new realities created by our two chosen film-makers. These realities echo the complexity and ambiguity of the contemporary individuality; these are the realities of a post-war subjectivity, one that is at one stroke both questioned and fragmented. Both Alain Resnais and Andrei Tarkovsky, whose bodies of work were conditioned by the emergence of a new post-modern consciousness, created a new cinematic style and also...
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Literary semiotics in the early works of Harry Mathews
Stankovianska, Veronika ; Armand, Louis (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
This thesis is concerned with the early works of American novelist Harry Mathews { in particular the literary semiotics of Mathews' The Sink- ing of the Odradek Stadium. The work also sets out to deal with Mathews' relationship to the avant-garde collective Oulipo (Ouvroir de Litt¶erature Po- tentielle/Workshop for Potential Literature) and the collective's project of formal experimentation. \Potential literature," treated as a function of sign systems, is approached through a comparative analysis of structures and re- lations found in seemingly disconnected branches of mathematics.
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The Emersonian Pynchon
Naser, Safwan ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
Ralph Waldo Emerson and his postmodemist colleague Thomas Pynchon ... a seemingly incongruous connection. The aim of this thesis is to explore the unusual relationship between these prominent authors and advert to the great influence which Ralph Waldo Emerson unquestionably had not only on authors who were not separated from him by such a noticeable temporal abysm, but also a most recent author who, according to the vast majority of the definitions of the postmodern, should be entirely free of any Emersonian influence. This intricate relationship will be assessed mainly through Mason and Dixon, the most recent novel by Thomas Pynchon which reflects many aspects of what Emerson found absolutely central. The summation of what seems to be propounded throughout the entire novel is represented by the idea of determining boundaries, in both the literal and the abstract sense. Emerson himself devoted much attention to this subject matter and it is clear that Pynchon and Emerson have much in common from this perspective, which holds true to such an extent that the boundary between the postmodem and romantic is itself facing the pressure of redefinition, which is in turn a fundamental concept which both authors share.
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Faith and the Search for Identity in the Works of J. D. Salinger
Pospíšilová, Tereza ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to study four characters in the works of the American Jewish author J.D. Salinger, namely in The Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, "Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters," "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "Teddy." The characters chosen for this thesis are Holden Caulfield, Franny Glass, Seymour Glass and Teddy McArdle. All these characters have found themselves at a critical point in their lives faced with questions about the meaning of life. They search for genuineness and struggle against "phoniness," to use Holden's favourite word, and do not feel content with the values set by the postwar American society. This thesis studies the reasons for their crises, their search for identity, together with its outcomes. It determines what role religion, faith and philosophy play in the process. The socio-cultural context of Salinger's work encourages questions about identity not only as a consequence of the confusion in identity and values brought about by the Second World War but also the tensions caused by the Cold War. Salinger's characters studied in this thesis are intellectuals who search for answers to existential questions in this period of change and as a result of not wanting to belong they alienate themselves from the society. This thesis examines the choice of...
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Against adaptation: toward transdisciplinarity and minor cinema
Petříková, Linda ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Nováková, Soňa (referee) ; Burt, Richard (referee)
Against Adaptation: Toward Transdisciplinarity and Minor Cinema Linda Petříková Abstract Over the past decades, the field adaptation studies has been trying to break new grounds and escape the confines of the predominant fidelity discourse. This thesis wants to propose new perspectives that have been widely underrepresented, at least in the Anglo-American context, drawing attention to the great relevance to adaptation of the writings of French critical thinkers, most notably Gilles Deleuze and his two-volume publication on cinema and Jacques Rancière and his continuation/reevaluation of Deleuze's film-related concepts. Without directly addressing questions of adaptation, the way both philosophers think about cinema is inseparable from their thinking about literature and indeed about other arts and media, exemplifying new transdisciplinary approaches to adaptation this thesis hopes to encourage. Even though it might seem counterintuitive, considering the efforts of adaptation studies to cut the roots it has grown within literary departments, I chose three Shakespearean adaptations for the case studies as I believe that such focus will enable us to see more clearly the significance of interstices as much as of the links the films form with the text. Jean-Luc-Godard's King Lear, Orson Welles's Chimes at...
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