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African-American Women Leaders after 1950s
Rybková, Veronika ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
Thesis abstract The thesis attempts truthfully to illustrate a situation of black female leaders active in the United States of the second half of the twentieth century. In order to cover this period, four black women activists will be focused on as representatives of two different generations. On the one hand, Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer will stand for the older generation because their activist careers culminated in the 1960s. On the other hand, Angela Davis and bell hooks will represent the subsequent decades as it was at that time when their careers matured. A comparison of the two generations will reveal considerable similarities in the four women's perspective on the nature of the struggle against white supremacy. It is necessary to bear in mind that this perspective was to a great extent influenced by a special kind of oppression the women faced as members of a marginalized group, that is, of the black community. Firstly, a detailed examination of the women's childhood and youth will show that it was already at that time when the four black women realized the presence of racism in their lives. Moreover, the focus on their background also introduces similar motives of the four women's decision to become active participants in the black community's struggle. Secondly, after the description of the...
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Violence, Guilt and Punishment in Selected Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Gemrichová, Marie ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
The BA thesis explores selected writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who addressed in his works many themes that range from nature through difficult relationships of characters and their communities to Biblical allusions. Some of the prominent themes which can be explored in his novels (such as The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables and Fanshawe) are the themes of violence, guilt and punishment. These chosen themes serve as topics that are treated individually in each novel. Consequently the novels are compared. The thesis first focuses on an exploration of the theme of violence, to which extent it appears in Hawthorne's novels, which characters are victims and transgressors, and where violence leads to. At the same time it explores the feeling of guilt of Hawthorne's characters, and whether guilt appears after a committed violent act, as well as the consequences that come in the form of the transgressors' punishment. Namely, I explore the relationship of Hester Prynne with Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth (The Scarlet Letter), the two original families of the Pyncheons and the Maules and the influence of the ancestors on their heirs (The House of the Seven Gables) and the actions of the mysterious "angler" compared to the deeds of the individuals around Harley College (Fanshawe)....
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The Role of Violence in Blood Meridian and The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Kubalová, Barbora ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Procházka, Martin (referee)
Violence has always been conspicuously present in the American nation, its culture and literature. Considering the immoderate abundance of violence in current entertainment industry, it would seem natural for the emotions to be dulled and able to process any abhorrent excess of violence; the reactions that both Blood Meridian and The Road by the American author Cormac McCarthy have gathered are thus all the more surprising. Face to face with the novels' unspeakable evil, many readers do recoil in horror and the pervasive violence of McCarthy's writings has provoked a wide range of critical perception. The novels may differ significantly in the setting − Southwestern United States of the 19th century in Blood Meridian as opposed to post-apocalyptic future of The Road - but the apparent gulf between both groups of characters and mainly between them and the reader is only another ruse of McCarthy's scheme, whereby he unveils uncomfortable truths about humankind. Although his meticulous study of sources might support the inevitability, even a penchant for bloodshed and carnage in specific conditions, it would be erroneous and contrary to McCarthy's portrayal to imply that it is anomalous rather than representative. The hostility in the novels should not be understood as a feature of a particular region or...
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Indians as the Imminent Threat: The Portayal of indians in Captivity Narratives
Brožová, Tereza ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
in English This particular MA thesis concentrates on the portrayal of Indians in captivity narratives of the early seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the essential source material being Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, first published in 1682. The thesis explores the relationship between Native Americans and settlers who saw Indians as a threat to their own existence and also as a threat to the western expansion. It also focuses on the confrontation of savagery and civilization from the point of view of common presuppositions and prejudices about the Native Americans that are very often depicted in several captivity narratives. Moreover, the thesis provides necessary definition of the genre of the captivity narrative with regard to the reaction of the reading public in the period of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. From the first arrivals of settlers and explorers the American continent symbolized a land of vast opportunities. Nevertheless, the continent not being fully explored was shrouded in a veil of mystery. Explorers and adventurers were fascinated by the extensive natural resources they found in the New World. Moreover, the New World was often called New Canaan or the Garden of Eden as it symbolized for the newcomers a possibility to start a new...
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The Reconstruction Amendments and their Relevance to Economic and Social Issues Faced by the United States from the 19th Century Onwards
Dudíková, Oldřiška ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Veselá, Pavla (referee)
This thesis examines a period in the history of the United States between 1865 and 1877 known as Reconstruction. It develops around the major pieces of legislation that were enacted over the course of its duration, and which incorporated for the first time into the American Constitution civil rights related to the country's black population of (in the examined period already former) slaves. The Reconstruction Amendments, as Amendments Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen to the U.S. Constitution came to be known, had several functions: one of them was to define the status of freed blacks in the post-war country, and they were also to serve as a means of restoring political and economic stability in the South devastated by the Civil War. The first part of the thesis looks at the so-called Presidential Reconstruction, which lasted until 1866 and was characterised by rather 'mild' provisions in the South on the part of the U.S. government. Lack of national intervention on the level of individual states, insufficient financial funds and President Johnson's sympathy toward the class of white Southern planters prevented a more radical development in the post-war South. Although Presidential Reconstruction saw some considerable achievements, such as the setting up of schools, health facilities and churches to...
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"Bad Nigga": Hypermasculinity in African American Culture
Sedlák, Ladislav ; Robbins, David Lee (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to analyze and interpret the hypermasculine elements of African American performance in rap music. It shall examine the ways in which the performance works as well as its possible influence on the public; therefore, it shall also react to the widespread criticism of the genre. In order to understand the complexity of the issue, it sketches the history of African American men struggling to attain their manhood and it points out the damage done to African American masculinity during the era of slavery and the following period of Reconstruction. Moreover, it is necessary to trace back the inspiration that helped to constitute the hypermasculine images. To do that, we shall look into the folkloric tradition of figures such as the "bad nigger" and "badman" or "bad nigga;" and we shall see how these personas transformed into the modern figures of "gangstas," pimps and hip hop revolutionaries. In the next two chapters, the thesis discusses the relation of rap music authenticity and the performativity of gender, which is based on Judith Butler's gender theory as described in her book Gender Trouble. Regarding authenticity, we shall dissect the term itself and its potential meaning for a work of art. In the last few chapters, the thesis attempts to categorize hip hop masculinity...
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Other Places: Visions of Utopia in Selected African-American Novels
Hamšíková, Marie ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
1 Abstract The thesis analyzes three novels with utopian features written by African American authors: Sutton E. Griggs's Imperium in Imperio (1899), George S. Schuyler's Black Empire (1936-1937) and Toni Morrison's Paradise (1997). The novels and their description of alternative all-black spaces are analyzed on the background of Michel Foucault's theory of heterotopias. In the first part of the thesis, I provide the introduction to the genre of utopia and its brief history, and I state a definition of utopia for the purposes of the thesis. Next I discuss the specificity of American context and introduce the concept of heterotopias as opposed to traditional utopias. The crucial features are simultaneity, juxtaposition, mutual relationships and mirroring. In the latter part of the thesis, I proceed to the analysis of the novels themselves, stressing mainly their treatment of race and racism. In Griggs's Imperium in Imperio, I describe the parallels between the white and black world in their use of rhetoric and in the Imperium's inspiration by the American War of Independence. I also examine the role of Du Boisian double-consciousness and its working in the concept of heterotopia. In the analysis of Schuyler's Black Empire, I focus on the fascist rhetoric resembling that of Italy in Italo-Ethiopian War,...
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Henry David Thoreau and His View of Slavery
Dvořáková, Irena ; Procházka, Martin (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
This BA thesis is concerned with Henry David Thoreau's opinions on slavery. The first part of the thesis focuses on the development of the abolitionist movement in the first half of the nineteenth century and of antislavery tendencies and organizations. The most important figures of the abolitionist movement, such as Benjamin Lundy, William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Dwight Weld, David Walker or Frederick Douglass, as well as the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the 1865 adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, are paid attention to. Thoreau's essays Civil Disobedience, Slavery in Massachusetts and A Plea for Captain John Brown are analyzed in the thesis. In his Civil Disobedience, the author criticizes the government for abusing, rather than protecting, American citizens, who have elected it and enabled its functioning. Thoreau scorns the government for supporting slavery and for waging the Mexican-American War. He believes that every man has an inalienable right to be free and since the government takes this right away from people, he responds to it with civil disobedience. One comes across Thoreau's critique of his fellow citizens and of their lack of interest in enslaved people in his Slavery in Massachusetts. The writer is disappointed with the fact that law,...
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Entropy and Consumerism in Pynchon's Works
Litochleb, Daniel ; Roraback, Erik Sherman (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
In his works, Pynchon engages the difficult concept of entropy and exposes how certain trends in contemporary culture and society, such as consumerism, exhibit tendencies similar to those of entropy. This observation has disturbing implications for contemporary culture and society, such as eventual cultural heat-death, where new ideas cease to develop, because all the useful intellectual energy has been exhausted. Therefore, I have decided to examine this concept of entropy and how Pynchon engages it in his works "Entropy," The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow, which expose the main contributors to greater entropy and the disturbing implications of this concept for contemporary culture and society, some of which we are witnessing even today. The two main scientific types of entropy, thermodynamic and that of information theory, are explored by Pynchon in his early short story "Entropy," which I have analyzed in the second chapter of this thesis. As such, this short story provides an unobstructed view of Pynchon's early engagement with the concept of entropy, which increases in complexity in his later works The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow. The Crying of Lot 49, explored in the third chapter of this thesis, indicates a considerable development of and change in Pynchon's perspective...
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Feminism in Selected Novels by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker
Chýlková, Jana ; Veselá, Pavla (advisor) ; Robbins, David Lee (referee)
The specific works analyzed in this thesis will be Sula and Beloved by Toni Morrison, and The Color Purple by Alice Walker. I have chosen these novels for their significance in the African-American literary canon, and for qualities that were assessed over time. While the choice of the novels Beloved and The Color Purple is justified by The Pulitzer Prize, Sula - which is, among other things, a novel depicting the moral and physical decline of the main heroine - was selected to contrast with Walker's bildungsroman. However, the central theme of these novels that will be explored is a black woman and her questionable representation in literature. In their novels, Morrison and Walker find diverse solutions to the problematic nature of the place of black women in a patriarchal society. Nevertheless, the selected fiction will be explored separately in terms of the feminist/womanist aspects of Morrison's and Walker's works. The Conclusion will focus on a comparison of the selected works by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. Thus, attention will be paid to the significant themes displayed in the novels such as racism and the limitations of gender roles. The objective of this analysis will be to find some common themes displayed in the authors' fiction that connect their understanding of the world, such as issues of...
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