This is the second volume of a two-volume co-authored study that explores the history of the concept of barbarism from the eighteenth century to the present and highlights its foundational role in... Show moreThis is the second volume of a two-volume co-authored study that explores the history of the concept of barbarism from the eighteenth century to the present and highlights its foundational role in modern European and Western identity. It constitutes an original comparative and interdisciplinary exploration of the concept’s modern European and Western history and combines overviews with detailed analyses of representative works of literature, art, fi lm, philosophy, and political and cultural theory. Volume 2 broaches figurations of barbarism and mobilizations of the barbarian across diverse contexts, media, and fields from the early twentieth century to our present: from avant-garde manifestoes to contemporary multilingual literature and adaptations of the Medea myth, from anticolonial to eco-socialist texts, from political philosophy and ethno-anthropology to contemporary pop culture, from Russian poetry to Western political rhetoric, from Europe to Latin America, from cinema to art biennials, and from (neo-)Marxists to the Alt-Right. Show less
This dissertation advances a new interpretation on the national formation of modern China through the lens of Chinese cinema. Primarily, this project explores how cinema—a modern invention imported... Show moreThis dissertation advances a new interpretation on the national formation of modern China through the lens of Chinese cinema. Primarily, this project explores how cinema—a modern invention imported from the West—has shaped China’s sociopolitical transition from a dynastic empire to a nation-state. It is argued that, the concurrence of motion picture’s arrival and nation-state’s advent in China at the turn of the twentieth century, is not to be considered as isolated events, but rather as a dialectical dynamism in which the imagined community of modern China has largely relied on cinema for its symbolic construction, and yet encountered constant resistance from cinematic representation. Viewing the formation of the Chinese nation-state from a cinematic perspective, this study centers on the conflicts between marginal figures and central categories in Chinese films. In approaching this unresolved dilemma, Jiyu Zhang dedicates his study to mapping out a dialectical relationship between China’s internal and external tensions. Through an extensive investigation of cinematic embodiment, Zhang hones in on four groups of characters that he terms the “central frontiers” of modern China’s cultural imaginary: children, women, ethnic minorities, and diaspora. Show less
***Please note that the print and digital version of this thesis are not identical as to the order of the various parts of the front and back matter.***Following the emergence of concepts related... Show more***Please note that the print and digital version of this thesis are not identical as to the order of the various parts of the front and back matter.***Following the emergence of concepts related to Arab nationalism there was a clear struggle between the progressive thinkers who wanted to secure a secular society and release public life from religion, and the conformists who wanted to maintain their traditional practices. This research proposes a critical understanding of letterist abstraction works of art by devising a tool that allows scholars to place a letterist work of art on a spectrum of abstraction in relationship to different elements in the painting. It is a way to understand the artworks and their artists in relationship to each other. Understanding letterists abstraction artists and the dynamics that dictated their work was essential for understanding the movement and its artistic production.The research places the life and work of letterist abstraction artists in a wider artistic, social and political context, thus helping the reader form an understanding of the movement from a broader perspective. By tracing all the threads for the assessment of letterist abstraction works of art and artists, I hope to encourage the emergence of more such scholarly and critical works, until we have a better critical understanding of the contemporary Arab art scene as a whole. Show less
