DOCSLIB.ORG

© 2012, Joshua Gang. All Rights Reserved. !

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
© 2012, Joshua Gang. All Rights Reserved. ! © 2012, Joshua Gang. All rights reserved. ! BEHAVIORISM AND LITERARY MODERNITY, 1913-2009 by JOSHUA GANG A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Literatures in English Written under the direction of Rebecca L. Walkowitz And approved by New Brunswick, New Jersey October, 2012 i ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Behaviorism and Literary Modernity, 1913-2009 By JOSHUA GANG Dissertation Director: Rebecca L. Walkowitz “Behaviorism and Literary Modernity, 1913-2009” constructs a history of twentieth- century literature by examining how writers incorporated behaviorism’s arguments against consciousness into discussions of aesthetics, subjectivity, and empire. Skeptical of introspective knowledge, behaviorist thinkers argued that only external behaviors— and not mental states—could be known empirically. This paradigm not only dominated twentieth-century psychology and philosophy but also made crucial, if unrecognized, contributions to modern literature. Examining how behaviorism circulated and competed against other psychological doctrines, this dissertation substantially alters the idea of modernism as a “turn inward.” Instead, I argue that modernism comprised an intense debate about the nature of such interiority and about the relationship of internal mental states to external aesthetic forms. Where some modernists said that literary forms offered unique access to mental states, others came to understand form itself as a behavior with ii no necessary ties to consciousness. Competing with explanations offered by psychoanalysis, structuralism, and cognitive science, behaviorism was at the heart of this debate—as well as others about the nature of subjectivity, agency, and language. Writers skeptical of depth psychology found through behaviorism new models of aesthetic form and political action that seemingly circumvented the problems of self-knowledge and other minds. Bringing together analyses of the New Critics, Samuel Beckett, Djuna Barnes, Bertolt Brecht, Richard Wright and JM Coetzee, this dissertation demonstrates how behaviorism changed literary thinking across the globe and allows new insights into the psychological dimensions of aesthetic form, critical interpretation, and globalization. iii Contents. Abstract of the Dissertation ii Dedication v Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Outward Turns 1 Chapter 1: Behaviorism and the Beginnings of Close Reading 36 Chapter 2: Mindless Modernism 72 Chapter 3: Brecht, Wright, and the Neurology of Political Literature 115 Chapter 4: Coetzee, Colonialism, and the Cognitive Revolution 171 Works cited 212 iv Dedication To AEJJ. v Acknowledgements I owe many things to many people. I am especially grateful to my dissertation committee: Rebecca Walkowitz, Jonathan Kramnick, Elin Diamond, and Doug Mao. They have overwhelmed me with their intelligence, warmth, and generosity. Few students have teachers so dedicated and enthusiastic. I owe particular thanks to my director Rebecca Walkowitz, who always supported me and never failed to push my thinking further. I cannot thank her enough. I am indebted to many Rutgers English faculty. Michael McKeon has been a tireless source of wisdom and humor. Lynn Festa, Colin Jager, David Kurnick, Meredith McGill, and Henry Turner have been outstanding interlocutors and helped me more than they know. Many of the most important and helpful conversations I had in graduate school happened at the Center for Cultural Analysis. To say that “Evidence and Explanation in the Arts and Sciences” and “Mind and Culture” shaped my work would be an understatement. This dissertation is stronger for the help and encouragement I’ve received from Emily Bartels, Matt Buckley, Marianne DeKoven, Billy Galperin, Ann Jurecic, John Kucich, Diane Sadoff, and Carolyn Williams. I am also thankful for the support I’ve received from faculty at other universities, particularly Nancy Armstrong, Jessica Burstein, Mike Lemahieu, Heather Love, Steven Meyer, Sam See and the editorial boards of ELH and Novel. Two people must be singled out here: Cheryl Robinson and Courtney Borack. vi I mean it literally when I say that this would not have happened without them. I also want to thank Leandra Cain and Rhea Ramey, who have tolerated me exceedingly well. Over the past few years I have come to rely on Sarah Alexander, Sarah Balkin, Manuel Betancourt, Dan Crossen, Craig Iturbe, Katherine Schaap Williams, Mary-Rush Yelverton, and Emily Zubernis in all areas of my life. They have kept me healthy both intellectually and emotionally. Long phone conversations with Ted Martin about anything and everything have done me a world of good. And when I was off campus, Juliette Wallack, Joel Pellini, Josh Honeyman, and Wendy Chang kept me laughing and well fed. I have also been lucky enough to enjoy the good company and critical eyes of Jordan Aubry, Sean Barry, Mark DiGiacomo, Mike Gavin, Octavio Gonzalez, April Graham, Devin Griffiths, Katy Howard, Jenna Lewis, Dawn Lilly, Caolan Madden, Alex Mazzaferro, Lizzie Oldfather, Brian Pietras, Jenny Raterman, Emma Raub, Debapriya Sarkar, John Savarese, Matt Sherrill, Devon Sherman, Samantha Stern-Leaphart, Anne Terrill, Scott Trudell, Mark Vareschi, and Meryl Winick. Three people deserve additional thanks and their own paragraph. Colleen Rosenfeld, Greg Ellermann, and Naomi Levine are absolute friends and critics. They have seen me, and my writing, at my best and worst. I owe them so much. And of course I must also thank my family—parents, sisters (and future brother- in-law), grandparents, aunts and uncles and so on. Nothing demonstrates love like putting up with someone who keeps talking about behaviorism. They have been extraordinary and continue to be so. vii 1 ! Introduction: Outward Turns “An ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations1 Behaviorism is an obsolete and infamous idea. Its claims—that consciousness is unknowable, that mental states lack any consistent connection to behavior—have suffered definitive rebuke over the past fifty years. And its style of empiricism has withered while innatist approaches to the brain, including those of cognitive science and recent philosophy of mind, have flourished. In literary history and cultural study, behaviorism remains a marginalized object of curiosity (and sometimes disgust). When it has appeared in accounts of literary history, behaviorism has served mostly as a foil to the psychological depth, agency, and aesthetic autonomy so valued by modern humanism. In contrast to psychoanalysis and existentialism, which allow for psychological interiority and intentional political action, behaviorism threatens to reduce us to mindless automata. Taken at face value, behaviorism is antithetical to the progressive, often utopian, aspirations of modern criticism and theory. And so if modern literature comprised a psychological turn inward, a turn toward subjectivity and the priority of subjective knowledge, then behaviorism’s distrust of introspection and mental states have been rightly excluded from literary history. And yet despite its obsolescence, despite its exclusion from historical accounts of modern literature, this dissertation argues that behaviorism comprised a central force in the development of transnational modernism and criticism. Behaviorism’s anti- ! 2 ! psychologism, particularly its attitudes about the knowability of mental states, circulated globally and competed against the explanations offered by other psychological discourses, such as psychoanalysis and cognitive science. Offering a set of philosophical and political entailments different than these discourses, behaviorism was drawn on by writers who were skeptical of psychoanalysis’s claims. Moreover, behaviorism allowed these writers to reconceive notions of aesthetic form, meaning, and selfhood without recourse to introspection or speculating about the minds of others. In these ways, writers from throughout the twentieth century translated behaviorism from a psychological and philosophical idea into a literary one. And as I hope to show, that very understanding of “literary” knowledge is a product of behavioristic thinking. Examining behaviorism’s place in the intellectual marketplace and following its circulation across the globe, this dissertation offers tangible evidence of how behaviorism came to shape modernist writing and criticism. As such, it not only complicates the characterization of modernism as a “turn inward” but also shows the larger philosophical and historical stakes of that imagined turn. Spanning the whole twentieth century and moving between North America, Europe, and sub-saharan Africa, behaviorism’s literary history reveals heretofore hidden connections within modernist literature and redefines the relationship of such literature to the philosophy of mind and the global history of ideas. As it stands, however, behaviorism is relatively absent from literary history and criticism. What we might infer from two important histories of modernism and psychology is that behaviorism went unnoticed by most writers and critics. In Judith Ryan’s The Vanishing Subject: Early Psychology and Modernism (1992), behaviorism is mentioned only twice, buried beneath deep analyses of psychoanalysis, structuralism, ! 3 ! functionalism, and early phenomenology. In Louis Sass’s Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Saying Yes: Collaboration and Scenography of Man Equals Man Degroot, Anton Degroot, A
    University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2016 Saying Yes: Collaboration and Scenography of Man Equals Man deGroot, Anton deGroot, A. (2016). Saying Yes: Collaboration and Scenography of Man Equals Man (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27708 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/3189 master thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Saying Yes: Collaboration and Scenography of Man Equals Man by Anton deGroot A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS GRADUATE PROGRAM IN DRAMA CALGARY, ALBERTA MAY 2016 © Anton deGroot 2016 Abstract The following artist’s statement discusses the early inspirations, development, execution of, and reflections upon the scenographic treatment of Bertolt Brecht’s Man Equals Man, directed by Tim Sutherland and produced by the University of Calgary in February of 2015. It details the processes of the set, lights, and properties design, with a focus on the director / scenographer relationship, and an examination of the outcomes. ii Preface It is critical that I mention something at the beginning of this artist’s statement to provide some important context for the reader.
    [Show full text]
  • Djuna Barnes's Bewildering Corpus. by Daniela Caselli. Burlington, VT
    Book Reviews Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes’s Bewildering Corpus. By Daniela Caselli. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. x + 290 pp. $114.95 cloth. Modernist Articulations: A Cultural Study of Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, and Gertrude Stein. By Alex Goody. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. xii + 242 pp. $75.00 cloth. TextWkg.indd 153 1/4/11 3:35:48 PM 154 THE SPACE BETWEEN Djuna Barnes’ Consuming Fictions. By Diane Warren. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008. xviii + 188 pp. $99.95 cloth. It is something of a scandal that so many people read Nightwood, a text that used to be so scandalous. For much of the twentieth century, the obscurity of Djuna Barnes’s novel was considered to be a central part of its appeal. To read or recommend it was to participate in a subversive or subcultural tradition, an alternative modernism that signified variouslylesbian , queer, avant-garde. Within the expanded field of recent modernist scholarship, however, Barnes’s unread masterpiece is now simply a masterpiece, one of the usual suspects on conference programs and syllabi. Those of us who remain invested in Barnes’s obscurity, however, can take comfort in the fact that, over the course of her long life and comparatively short career, Barnes produced an unruly body of work that is unlikely to be canonized. Indeed, Barnes’s reputation has changed: once treated as one of modern- ism’s interesting background figures, fodder to fill out the footnotes of her more famous male colleagues, she has now become instead a single-work author, a one-hit wonder. And no wonder; the rest of her oeuvre is made up of journalism, a Rabelaisian grab-bag of a novel, seemingly slight poems and stories, a Jacobean revenge drama, and an alphabetic bestiary.
    [Show full text]
  • Djuna Barnes Nightwood. a Modernist Exercise
    ENRIQUE GARCÍA DIEZ UNIVERSIDAD DE VALENCIA DJUNA BARNES'NIGHTWOOD; A MODERNIST EXERCISE "On or about December 1910 human life changed." These now famous words of Virginia Woolf tried to reflect the consciousness of the speed of change at the beginning of the century. This sort of dramatic or prophetic gesture only revealed the intensity with which writers and artists of all kinds lived one of the most dynamic periods of hvunan history. James McFarlane and Malcom Bradbury go so far as to say that Modernism was one of those overwhelming dislocations in human perception which changed man's sensibility and man's relationship to history permanently. In its multiplicity and brilliant confusión, its commitment to an aesthetic of endless renewal, or as Irving Howe calis it, its improvisation of "the tradition of the new," Modernism is still open to analysis and to debate. Even if we are talking of Postmodernism and even Post-postmodernism, the period we are referring to now (first quarter of the century, roughly) does not have a single concrete and aesthetic reference. As a matter of fact, few ages been as múltiple and as promiscuous in their artistic cholees as was Modernism. Very often, though, the tendency to sophistication and mannerism, to introversión, and to technical display for its own sake and even internal scepticism have often been cited as essential in the definition of Modernism. And since the terms have a vague connotation, we will have to establish some kind of framework of reference or definition of the movement in order to move relatively safely in the analysis of a novel often mentioned as a masterpiece of modern aesthetics.
    [Show full text]
  • A Gender Oriented Approach Toward Brecht
    A GENDER-ORIENTED APPROACH TOWARDS BRECHTIAN THEATRE: FUNCTIONALITY, PERFORMATIVITY, AND AFFECT IN MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHIDREN AND THE GOOD PERSON OF SZECHWAN by SAADET BİLGE COŞKUN Submitted to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Sabancı University August 2015 i ii © Saadet Bilge Coşkun All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT A GENDER-ORIENTED APPROACH TOWARDS BRECHTIAN THEATRE: FUNCTIONALITY, PERFORMATIVITY, AND AFFECT IN MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN AND THE GOOD PERSON OF SZECHWAN Saadet Bilge Coşkun Conflict Analysis and Resolution, M.A. Thesis, 2015 Supervisor: Assist. Prof. Dr. Hülya Adak Keywords: Bertolt Brecht, epic theatre, performativity, gender, affect This thesis presents a gender-oriented critique of Bertolt Brecht’s theory of epic theatre and his two plays: Mother Courage and Her Children and, The Good Person of Szechwan. Feminist theatre scholars often criticize Brecht’s plays for not paying enough attention to gender issues and merely focusing on a class-based agenda. The main issues that these scholars highlight regarding Brecht’s plays and theory include the manipulation of female figures through functionalizing them in order to achieve certain political goals. Other criticisms focus on how female characters are desubjectified and/or desexualized through this instrumentalism. On the other hand, feminist critics also consider epic theater techniques to be useful in feminist performances. Considering all these earlier criticisms, this thesis aims to offer new perspectives for the gender- focused analysis of epic theatre and Brecht’s later plays. Similar to many other criticisms, I conclude that the embedded instrumentalism of epic theater techniques such as materializing and functionalizing the issues as well as the characters, in most cases leads to stereotyping the female characters.
    [Show full text]
  • Lowry's Reading
    LOWRY'S READING An Introductory Essay W. H. New 1Ν TWO LARGE BOXES at the University of British Columbia are the remnants of Malcolm Lowry's library, a motley collection of works that ranges from Emily Brontë and Olive Schreiner to Djuna Barnes and Virginia Woolf, from the Kenyon, Partisan, and Sewanee Reviews to A Pocketful of Canada, from Latin Prose Composition to the Metropolitan Opera Guide, and from Elizabethan plays to Kafka and Keats. Little escaped his attention, in other words, and even such a partial list as this one indicates his eclectic and energetic insatiability for books. That he was also an inveterate film-goer and jazz en- thusiast, and that he absorbed and remembered everything he experienced, makes any effort to separate out the individual influences on his work an invidious one; rather like chasing a rabbit through Ali Baba's caves, the activity seems in- commensurate with its surroundings. But on frequent occasions an appreciation of the scope of his references or the source of a single allusion will take us closer to Lowry's tone and method. Richard Hauer Costa, for example, writing in the University of Toronto Quarterly in 1967, points out that "unacknowledged literary kinship" between Under the Volcano, Aiken's Blue Voyage, and Joyce's Ulysses: the central use of the quest theme, the burgeoning sense of remorse, the "impatience" of the author with usual narrative methods, and so on. The Consul's "garden scene" in Chapter Five thus becomes an analogue to Joyce's Nighttown episode, and Lowry's dislocation of time, his recognition of what Costa elsewhere calls the "weight of the past", relates to Joyce's and Proust's.
    [Show full text]
  • An Analysis of Djuna Barnes's Nightwood
    Performance and Grief: An Analysis of Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood by Theresa Anita McCarron Gaumond, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the Department of English California State University Bakersfield In Partial Fulfillment for the Degree of Masters of Arts Spring 2013 Copyright by Theresa Anita Gaumond 2013 This Thesis, "Performance and Grief: An Analysis ofDjuna Barnes's Nightwood" by Theresa Anita McCarron Gaumond, B.A. has been accepted on behalf of the Department of English by their supervisory committee: Dr. Kim Flachmann Dedication I wish to dedicate this thesis to the memories of Joseph Hill, Beverly Baker and Heather Bartek. Acknowledgements I would sincerely like to thank Dr. Ayuso and Dr. Flachmann for taking the time and energy to advise me. Both of them generously offered to assist me and their guidance has been integral to the creation of this paper. I am continually humbled by both of their dedication to the education of students. Since a project of this magnitude cannot be created in a vacuum, I need to graciously thank those who have served as a sounding board for my ideas: Lisbeth Tinocco, Nora Traut, Laura Peet, Darlene Stotler, Dave Ryan, Chris Dison, Jeff Eagan, and Monica Diaz-Padilla. Also, Kathy Hafler and Milissa Ackerley both were sources of encouragement. I also need to thank my co-tutors at the Bakersfield College Writing Center for the rabid debates on word choice. The epic discussion on “myriad” and “plethora” ensured that I would not use either word in this thesis. Special thanks are also directed to Shelia Youngblood for her cheerful willingness to serve as an editor.
    [Show full text]
  • Djuna Barnes B
    DJUNA BARNES b. June 12, 1892 d. June 18, 1982 AUTHOR “The truth is how you say it, and to be ‘one’s self’ is the most shocking custom of all.” Djuna Barnes was a prominent modernist writer known for her experimental style and edgy themes. Writers such as Truman Capote and Bertha Born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, to a polygamist family, she was inspired to write by her grandmother, a feminist writer and journalist. As a child, Barnes was Harris have cited sexually abused by family members. In 1909, she was forced to marry her father’s Barnes as an inspiration brother-in-law. Two months later, she left him. for their works. In 1912, Barnes moved to Greenwich Village and began writing for magazines and newspapers. She had affairs with men and women. She wrote novels, including “The Book of Repulsive Woman: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings” and “Paprika Johnson.” She moved to Paris, where she lived with Thelma Wood, her lover and fellow artist. Barnes became involved in the Parisian lesbian community, which is depicted in her privately printed novel, “Ladies Almanack.” In 1931, after her relationship with Wood ended, Barnes relocated to England. She stayed in a country manor with other writers and literary critics. She wrote “Nightwood,” her best-known novel, which received attention for its stylistic excellence. So impressed by the book, T.S. Elliot wrote the introduction and became involved in its publication. “Nightwood” depicts desire between women and challenges the gender binary. In 1939, Barnes returned to New York, where she lived in relative solitude for the remainder of her life.
    [Show full text]
  • Feminist Baroque Narratives in Interwar Atlantic Modernism
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses 5-8-2020 WRITING AGAINST HISTORY: FEMINIST BAROQUE NARRATIVES IN INTERWAR ATLANTIC MODERNISM Annaliese Hoehling Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Literature in English, Anglophone outside British Isles and North America Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Hoehling, Annaliese, "WRITING AGAINST HISTORY: FEMINIST BAROQUE NARRATIVES IN INTERWAR ATLANTIC MODERNISM" (2020). Doctoral Dissertations. 1932. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1932 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WRITING AGAINST HISTORY: FEMINIST BAROQUE NARRATIVES IN INTERWAR ATLANTIC MODERNISM A Dissertation Presented by ANNALIESE D. HOEHLING Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2020 Department of English © Copyright by Annaliese D. Hoehling 2020 All Rights Reserved WRITING AGAINST
    [Show full text]
  • The Imagery of Interior Spaces
    the imagery of interior spaces Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books, an independent non-profit press, @ https://punctumbooks.com/support/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contri- butions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t find a welcoming port elsewhere. Our ad- venture is not possible without your support. Vive la Open Access. Fig. 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490–1500) the imagery of interior spaces. Copyright © 2019 by the editors and au- thors. This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International li- cense, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum books endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ First published in 2019 by punctum books, Earth, Milky Way. https://punctumbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-1-950192-19-9 (print) ISBN-13: 978-1-950192-20-5 (ePDF) doi: 10.21983/P3.0248.1.00 lccn: 2019937173 Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress Book design: Vincent W.J.
    [Show full text]
  • The Performative Personhood of Elizabeth Robins, Djuna Barnes, and the Baroness Elsa Von Freytag- Loringhoven
    Illinois State University ISU ReD: Research and eData Theses and Dissertations 6-29-2018 Women Of The Future: The Performative Personhood Of Elizabeth Robins, Djuna Barnes, And The Baroness Elsa Von Freytag- Loringhoven Michelle Feda Illinois State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd Part of the History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology Commons, and the Theatre History Commons Recommended Citation Feda, Michelle, "Women Of The Future: The Performative Personhood Of Elizabeth Robins, Djuna Barnes, And The Baroness Elsa Von Freytag-Loringhoven" (2018). Theses and Dissertations. 917. https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/917 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ISU ReD: Research and eData. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ISU ReD: Research and eData. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WOMEN OF THE FUTURE: THE PERFORMATIVE PERSONHOOD OF ELIZABETH ROBINS, DJUNA BARNES, AND THE BARONESS ELSA VON FREYTAG- LORINGHOVEN MICHELLE FEDA 67 Pages The New Woman is the term used to describe the idea of a woman who embodied the changing social norms around her involvement in public life during the fin-de-siècle. New Women were bold and brash, educated and independent, and, importantly young; the term encapsulated any particular woman who stepped outside of her mother's Victorian social norms. The New Woman was as much a construct of the time as it was a description. The playwright and suffragette Elizabeth Robins performs “new womanhood” on the stage, and her play Votes for Women! enacts this struggle between New Women and the older generation.
    [Show full text]
  • This Is Not My Body: Alienated Corporeality and Brechtian Critical Theatre Practices
    This is Not My Body: Alienated Corporeality and Brechtian Critical Theatre Practices A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Ashley Majzels IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Michal Kobialka, Professor of Theatre Arts and Dance, Adviser December 2014 © Ashley Majzels, 2014 i Acknowledgments Writing my dissertation would not have been possible without the support and encouragement of many. For his patience and attention I would like to thank my adviser, Michal Kobialka. For their guidance and feedback, I would like to thank my outside examiner Keya Ganguly, as well as Sonja Kuftinec, Ananya Chatterjea, and Margaret Werry. Additionally, I have to thank Ginni Arons for her extensive help in navigating the Grad School's requirements while I was completing the dissertation in Canada. I would also like to thank Megan Lewis, Branislav Jakovljevic and Aleksandra Wolska for their advice and tutelage during my time at the University of Minnesota. A special thanks to Freya Olafson for her time as well as graciously providing access to her archival materials. For their personal support and feedback during the writing process, my thanks and apologies go out to Claudine Majzels, Eve Majzels, Praba Pilar, Per Brask, and Noah Decter-Jackson. ii Dedication My dissertation is dedicated to my family: C, E, F, and S. iii Abstract My dissertation advances a historical materialist understanding of alienated corporeality meant to inform Brechtian critical theatre practices. In the first half of my project, I draw on Marx's account of commodity fetishism and industrial labour to frame a discussion of Brecht's Mann ist Mann.
    [Show full text]
  • FT Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein
    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2003 Domesticity and the modernist aesthetic : F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein Allison Elise Carey Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Carey, Allison Elise, "Domesticity and the modernist aesthetic : F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2003. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5115 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Allison Elise Carey entitled "Domesticity and the modernist aesthetic : F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Allen Dunn, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Allison Elise Careyentitled "Domesticity and the ModernistAesthetic: F.T. Marinetti, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein." I have examinedthe finalpaper copy of this dissertation forform and content and recommend that it be accepted in partialfulfillment of the requirements for the degreeof Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English.
    [Show full text]