In Savage Embraces: James Purdy, Melodrama, and the Narration of Identity, Looi van Kessel explores the ways in which the early works of the American author James Purdy undermine the notion of a... Show moreIn Savage Embraces: James Purdy, Melodrama, and the Narration of Identity, Looi van Kessel explores the ways in which the early works of the American author James Purdy undermine the notion of a stable and true identity. Writing in the 1950s and 60s, a time in which identity politics enjoyed increased purchase in the United States, Purdy imagines characters who feel the urge to act out their sexual desires without having to conform to oppressive identity categories. In so doing, Purdy is searching for a language that shows how identity is produced through narration. To tease out this language, Looi approaches Purdy’s writing through the mode of melodrama—a mode that focuses on the aesthetic dramatization of tensions in the plot—while also bringing his work in conversation with current queer thinking. Ultimately, this dissertation attempts to bring the disparate fields of narrative theory and queer theory in a meaningful relation with one another. Show less
Big Books in Times of Big Data examines recent trends of size and scale in the novel in terms of the shift from the bound book to the newer materialities of the digital. Using a wide-ranging... Show moreBig Books in Times of Big Data examines recent trends of size and scale in the novel in terms of the shift from the bound book to the newer materialities of the digital. Using a wide-ranging international archive of hefty tomes by authors such as Mark Z. Danielewski, Roberto Bolaño, Elena Ferrante, and Karl Ove Knausgård, George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Franzen, and William T. Vollmann, Van de Ven takes us into a contested bookish terrain beyond the 1,000-page mark, where issues of scale and readerly comprehension clash with authorial aggrandizement and the pleasures of ‘binging’ and serial consumption. Show less
This work aimed at providing a better understanding of the involvement of Ottoman (Muslim) women, both as object and as subject, in the regeneration of nationalism through their activities as... Show moreThis work aimed at providing a better understanding of the involvement of Ottoman (Muslim) women, both as object and as subject, in the regeneration of nationalism through their activities as individuals and in female associational life. By describing and analyzing the feminist, philanthropic/charitable, and patriotic/nationalist activities of Ottoman Muslim women during the period 1908-1918, the study sought to get a better understanding of the identity claims which are part of the particular form of discourse which nationalism is and to show how the processes of community and/or nation building and the creation of state indentity/identities in the late Ottoman Empire were gendered. It shows that Ottoman Muslim women with their organizations and activities not only reflected the multi-tier identities prevailing in late Ottoman society, but actively took part in shaping, shifting and reshuffling them and that knowledge of the activities of Ottoman (Muslim) women in the many feminist, philanthropic and patriotic organizations which existed during the last decades of the Ottoman Empire is indispensible for a better understanding of the development of nationalism(s) in the late Ottoman era and the identity claims involved in it. Show less
