Humanities

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Open Access
After "Postmemory": Coping with Holocaust Remembrance in Postmodern Hebrew Literature
(2015-08-28) Seliger, Yael; Horowitz, Sara Reva
This interdisciplinary study suggests that the time has come to pursue a new modality of Holocaust remembrance. It assumes that when we speak of “remembering” we are referring to acts of remembrance, for, with the exception of those who lived through the Holocaust, those of us who were not “there” cannot remember the actual events of the Holocaust. The study further contends that acts of Holocaust remembrance ought to be perceived as forms of coping with remembrance of the Holocaust. It also suggests that critical frameworks and narrative strategies developed in postmodern Hebrew literature – specifically the writings of Etgar Keret – offer a literary exemplar of coping with Holocaust remembrance. The articulation of the raison d’être for a paradigmatic shift in conceptualizing Holocaust remembrance is defined in the context of the general field of Holocaust representation. More specifically, the modality of coping with Holocaust remembrance is juxtaposed with an existing and prevalent conceptualization known to scholars and writers as “postmemory” – a structural framework of Holocaust remembrance applied to the second generation. Of special significance is the interlacing of the modality of coping with Holocaust remembrance with postmodern thinking. Foremost in this alignment with postmodernism is the acknowledgement that the events of the Holocaust destabilized Enlightenment-modern metaphysical faith in human rationalism and linearity of epistemological, ontological, scientific, and humanistic progress. Prominent in this discussion is the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and the ethics of the language of deconstruction. These theoretical insights are then applied to the writings of Etgar Keret. Apart from presenting Keret as a consummate storyteller, Keret’s art and its relation to the modality of coping with Holocaust remembrance is analyzed as integral to the cultural, social, and political ambiance of a postmodern Israeli milieu.
Open Access
After Collective Memory: Postnational Europe and Socially Engaged Art
(2015-12-16) Synenko, Joshua Francis; Reisenleitner, Markus
This thesis focuses on works of public art that enjoy proven success in challenging the national bias of European heritage practice. By developing methods at the intersection between collective memory, critical historiography, and theory, I situate heritage debates in relation to forms of discrimination that emerged as symptoms of the financial crisis (2008-present). I then describe how public art interventions help to unsettle the grand narratives of cosmopolitan idealism that work to neutralize anti-racist strategies in the public sphere. The progression of my thesis eventually poses a challenge to the cosmopolitan reach of the Jewish diasporic tradition in particular. To that end, I explore the archival strategies of Holocaust memory practitioners, including their express aim of including diverse (i.e. non-Jewish) histories of violent exclusion into the historical record; the social and political conditions for the emergence of counter-monuments in West Germany during the 1970s, and the subsequent efforts that were made to turn this memorial aesthetic into a global standard for the memory culture industry; the haunting resurgence of cosmopolitan aspirations in Yael Bartana’s video installation, And Europe Will Be Stunned (2011); and a meditation on Bartana’s attempt at revisiting the racial dynamics of intergenerational violence in the aftermath of genocide.
Open Access
Among Umwelten: Meaning-Making in Critical Posthumanism
(2019-03-05) McCormack, Brian Herbert; Berland, Jody
Conceptualizations of meaning ground formulations of human/nonhuman animal similarity and difference. Anthropocentric accounts of meaning-making are increasingly untenable in light of contemporary knowledge of nonhuman life, yet they remain influential, implicit and intractable even within conceptual frameworks that otherwise reject their explicit premises. This study traces dynamic, process-oriented notions of meaning from Jakob von Uexkll's seminal work through autopoietic, phenomenological, biosemiotic and Deleuzian thought. I critically examine how this lineage counters Cartesian dualist and humanist notions of meaning-making in favour of a view of meaning as dynamic process. The relationship between organism and environment is characterized by Uexkll as a relationship of meaning. Uexkll envisions life as myriad complex melodic relations that entwine organism and environment in a practice of meaning-making. Uexkll's work and its extensions across a range of disciplines form a rich theoretical foundation for contemporary critical posthumanist efforts to change how human/nonhuman animal difference and similarity is conceptualized. Contemporary critical posthumanism especially the work of Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Elizabeth Grosz and Cary Wolfe works to resituate human meaning-making within a wider ecological context. Yet a cohesive and comprehensive view of meaning grounded in critical posthumanism and its foundational works is fragmented across a broad and complex disciplinary and conceptual terrain. I draw out and develop from this literature the key components for a critical posthumanist concept of meaning.
Open Access
Art and Otherness: Tragic Visions in Modern Literature
(2018-11-21) Karamally, Hamza Ali; Shea, Victor
My dissertation is entitled Art and Otherness: Tragic Visions in Modern Literature. The two main subjects of inquiry I take up are the figure of the otherboth as an expression of phenomenological alterity and as a postcolonial subjectand the representation of this figure in modern literature. I investigate the intersections between these two subjects, i.e. whether art is an especially insightful medium or discourse to discuss the subject of otherness in the sense that it represents a disruption within the nature of experience that resembles the encounter with the other. As a basic rationale, my dissertation also accordingly attempts a self-reflexivity grounded in problematizing both the formulation of and interaction between competing conventions of otherness. More succinctly, I attempt herein a methodology that reads across discourses whilst remaining on their margins, with the dual purpose of avoiding the self-confirmation of each ratiocination and finding, specifically in art (and in particular literature), a discursive practice that seeks to avoid, or perhaps transcend, a stable definition of otherness. To effectively probe the various political, psychological, existential and phenomenal aspects of otherness, my project and chapters are organized around these separate but overlapping dimensions. My selected texts are predominantly from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with a particular focus on Modernist literature, as the latters anxieties about the nature of art and of the other are particularly useful to probe these and other relevant questions. I focus primarily on fiction by Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Salman Rushdie, Anita Desai, Albert Camus, Kamel Daoud, Don DeLillo, Saadat Hasan Manto, Yann Martel and Herman Melville, to which I apply a variety of theoretical lenses. I juxtapose these texts from different literary canons and maintain a correspondingly interdisciplinary critical approach in order to disentangle the figure of the other from various competing ontological and theoretical systems. My premise for this methodology is that pairing and reading these texts in unusual contexts allows for a drawing out of shared symbology, themes and metaphors and opens up a space for a more robust conversation about the relationship between art and otherness.
Open Access
Art routes: Locating second-generation black Caribbean Canadian women's perspectives
(2022-12-14) Brown, Shaunasea Elaine; Davis, Andrea A.
Using visual and performance art, music and photography, Art Routes: Locating Second-Generation Black Caribbean Canadian Women’s Perspectives centers a specifically second-generation discourse using the artwork and lived experiences of second-generation Black women artists—Kamilah Apong, Sandra Brewster, Shaunasea Brown, Anique Jordan, Brianna Roye, Camille Turner and Shi Wisdom. By attending to the contours of Black life in the complex geographies of Toronto and beyond, Art Routes acknowledges and articulates how Black women artists provide blueprints for how Black people can create their own kinds of freedom. Through the nuanced position of second-generation be(long)ing, Art Routes captures the struggle of second-generation Black women artists to engage in new forms of world-making that reevaluate ideas about gender, sexuality, and citizenship, posit new radical strategies of care, and re/define how Black people live within and despite contexts of death and dying. With the understanding that the ability to create is a matter of life and death for Black people, Art Routes offers creative ways to think about Black being in Canada while identifying how Black Canadian women artists imagine and construct more inhabitable environments for themselves and their communities.
Open Access
At Play in the Fields of Pattern: Theorizing Pattern Thinking in a Museum of Islamic Art
(2020-05-11) Bentley, Patricia Marylin; Bailey, Steven C.
This dissertation examines the interaction between a museum-going subject and a patterned museum object from two perspectives: scholarly writing about pattern and the experiences of visitors to the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, Canada. Patterning is fundamental to human meaning-making, but in Euro-American theories of art, especially in categories of decorative art or ornament, it tends to be overlooked and under-theorized. In museology, visitors are rarely if ever asked about their responses to the patterned objects that they view. I combine situational analysis methodologies with digital humanities methods of data mining and data visualizations to compare my findings from my interviews with AKM visitors to scholarly writing about pattern. My argument arising from the comparison is that visual patterns on objects do not fulfil a mere decorative function, but have a narrative power that moves in the space between object and subject via their unique histories, interacting with the subjects histories and prior experiences to produce meaning that is situated, contingent, and embodied. Specifically, I highlight visual patterns on objects as transdiscursive, a term which describes their paradoxical nature as signifiers of meaning. I argue that they are fixed and fluid at the same time: fixed to the technical properties of their objects, but apt to appear on objects spanning many geographies and time periods. By approaching them in this way, I assign new prominence to patterned objects as conveyors of stories in museum gallery viewing. Finally, beyond this study, the methodological pairing of situational analysis and data mining that produced my new understanding of patterns has possibilities for future research beyond museology and pattern studies to pursue a broader set of questions.
Open Access
Between Ashkenaz and Sepharad, Judaism and Christianity: Asher ben Jehiel as a Liminal Figure in the High Middle Ages
(2020-11-13) Goldenthal, Evan Seth; Lockshin, Martin I.
The central figure of this dissertation, Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel (Rosh, c.1250-1327), is explored as a liminal figure of the Middle Ages, in a variety of ways. Using the scholarship of Homi Bhabha on the topic of cultural hybridity, in addition to other thinkers, this medieval rabbi is presented as an individual who situated himself between various borders, often as a consequence of historical circumstances. The first border he crossed was from his birthplace of Ashkenaz to Sephardic lands, a result of a persecutory environment in his place of origin. Beyond geographic borders, Rosh traverses a communal boundary that exists between Jews and Christians. As a result of being a leading Jewish thinker in Christian lands, his encounter with Christianity was necessary and regular. Subsequently, we see many references to Christianity in his works, with a duality emerging. This dissertation examines this collision vs. conversation narrative, noting that Rosh takes different stances on Jewish-Christian relations in different texts. The collision narrative emerges in his Pentateuch commentary, while the conversation approach stems from his legal writings. This dissertation, therefore, presents texts that help understand this liminal image of Rosh. Some of these primary sources have not been explored sufficiently in current Jewish scholarship. This work also provides a more robust understanding of Jewish-Christian relations in the High Middle Ages while offering insight into whether or not more modern critical approaches (postcolonial and otherwise) are useful to current scholars of the Middle Ages.
Open Access
Black Nerds Pleasure Reading Choices: Race, Representation and Prosocial Skills
(2022-08-08) Seow, Janet Rosemarie; Sanders, Leslie; Chakarborty, Kabita
Not much is known about what African Canadian Black youth read for pleasure. The subject of this study is a group of young people who belong to the Black nerd subculture (aka Blerds) of urban Toronto. The participants are between 16 and 25 years of age and identify as predominantly working class. Research conducted with this group reveals that graphic novels, fan fiction, traditional comics and webcomics are their main reading choices. Participatory research is used to understand how these texts are read and their implications for race, representation and prosocial skills and values. Although there are common threads among all Blerds, this study adopts and adapts youth subcultural theory and intersectional theory to understand the unique interest, sense of belonging, morals and values of Blerds in the specific location of urban Toronto. Since research on the Blerd subculture is limited, the study's findings provide insights into the Blerd culture and Black youth's perspectives about living in multiracial, multicultural Toronto.
Open Access
Canada's (Post) "New Age" Spiritual Centers and the Impact of the Internet in the Context of Digital Religion
(2020-05-11) Shainidze, Roland; Scott, Jamie S.
As a phenomenon that has had overwhelming social, cultural and political influence, the internet has become so embedded in our lives that it is difficult to imagine how we communicated or accessed information before its invention. It is not surprising, then, that the web is also a very active religious environment with religious and spiritual groups using it extensively to proclaim their beliefs and to be in contact with their followers. In a macro sense, web-based religion is any online activity, from the simple dissemination of information about a religious group or church to full web-based religious practice. It can be understood as occurring along a spectrum from religion online at one end to online religion at the other. First developed by Christopher Helland and further refined by Lorne Dawson, religion online means the use of the internet as a means of providing essential information about, or by, religious groups, movements, and traditions. At the other end of the spectrum, online religion sees the internet as a space that permits the practice of religion or ritual, or worship. In other words, rather than use their web browsers to simply search for information, religious followers use the web as an integral part of their religious lives (Helland, 2000; Dawson, 2005). However, a new term has entered the academic vocabulary and is being applied to online/offline religious praxis and that is Digital Religion. This latest definition brings a broader meaning to online/offline religion because it accepts the reality that current religious practice co-exists in an online and an offline world simultaneously and the rapid growth of digital technology has included religious or spiritual movements. This dissertation focuses on three New Age spiritual groups in Canada (English Canada only): the Universal Oneness Spiritual Center1 in Toronto, Ontario, the Centre for Spiritual Living in Calgary, Alberta and Unity Vancouver in Vancouver B.C., and reviews how these three groups use the internet in their everyday activities such as ritual, prayer and meditation and compares and contrasts the pros and cons of online and offline New Age spirituality, paying particular attention to issues of social, cultural and geographical differentiation in the light of Digital Religion.
Open Access
Ecology out of Bounds: Environmental Humanities Scholarship for Multi-Species and Transdisciplinary Contexts
(2017-07-27) Derry, Justin Eastwood; Ingram, Susan
This dissertation argues that the critical, political and ethical resources shaping popular and scholarly forms of Anglo-North American environmentalism lack the theoretical and imaginative tools to address the challenges of the Anthropocene (that is, the notion that the human species, enabled by a globally expansive petro-industrial apparatus, has become a dominant geological force). Unsettling notions of progress, agency, nature and the individual in novel ways, the Anthropocene changes the way humanists understand what it means to be human and what environmentalists have understood nature to be. As a result, I argue that the anthropogenic landscapes of the Anthropocene challenge writers, theorists, storytellers, artists, scientists and activists to open different kinds of intellectual and imaginative space. Therefore, drawing on feminist science and technology studies, multi-species anthropology and posthumanism, this dissertation contributes to the emerging field of the Environmental Humanities by contextualizing forms of environmental mediation responsive to Anthropocene environments. Making a mess of strict disciplinary and species divisions, my work addresses the way that different kinds of knowledge practice show up in and make a difference in the way bodies and multi-species assemblages materialize and function. Moreover, I distinguish my contribution to environmental thought by avoiding knowledge practices predicated on into the wild narratives and return to nature tropes. Problematically, these kinds of narratives are at risk of advocating masculine imaginaries of control and conquest, and moral superiority complexes about self-sufficiency that delimit boundaries between the natural and the unnatural, the pure from artificial, and thus close off knowledge making work from play, experimentation, wonder and curiosity. More than a question of accurately representing what the Anthropocene is or is not, my research amounts to a pragmatic challenge about how to craft theoretical and textual practices that foster anthropo(de)centric, multi-species and transdisciplinary media, publics and futures.
Open Access
Essay in Judgment: Reading for Aesthetics in Mansfield Park
(2018-11-21) Goldberg, Bessie Rovainen; Clark, Matthew C.
My dissertation demonstrates how Mansfield Park, which contains philosophically compelling claims about judgment generally and aesthetic judgment specifically, makes these claims through a reading experience that is itself an exercise in aesthetic judgment. Although this experience could be had by any actual reader of the novel, the experience of every actual reader depends upon her willingness to measure the exercise of her own faculty of judgment against that of the self-reflective, aesthetically disinterested, yet emotionally engaged reader whom the novel itself hypothesizes. With this hypothesized reader, I argue, the novel encourages readers to realize this ideal of aesthetic judgment while also explaining the various ways they might fall short. This hypothesized reader, I argue further, strives to follow a demand similar to Mikhail Bakhtins demand in Art and Answerability for each individual to make art and life answerable to one another. Mansfield Park challenges readers to make art and life answerable primarily through a double plot structure; narrative techniques that complicate the distance between characters and readers; and the portrayal of the characters various failures of judgment. I employ methods of rhetorical narratology in my analysis of the novel to highlight the specifically literary ways it contributes to questions of philosophical aesthetics. This approach also accounts for the extent and types of disagreements about the novel in the critical literature about it. Within the general structure of a marriage comedy, Mansfield Park tells another story that challenges the expectations raised by that structure: the story of Fannys complicated perspective on Mansfield Park as both she and it change. I call this story the novels position plot. By complicating readers expectations for and judgments of the characters, the novel challenges readers to consider the extent to which their judgments of the characters and of the novel should be grounded in their expectations for a marriage comedy and the extent to which they should be informed by the novels portrayal of how ones position affects ones judgment. The novel manipulates readers expectations as well as their distance from the characters in clarifying the limits and possibilities of both disinterested and aesthetic judgment.
Open Access
Free Speech & its Limits: A Study of the Rippling Effects of Hate Speech Laws in Canada
(2023-12-08) Mohammadi, Monireh; Shea, Victor
This dissertation critically examines the loopholes in Canada’s hate speech legislation and its adjudication processes within courts and tribunals. It argues that Canadian hate speech laws are founded on expansive notions of harm, creating a slippery slope where protected expressions can also face restrictions. This dissertation argues that the current hate speech legal framework in Canada overlooks speech as an exceptional social phenomenon that is inextricable from human creativity, which is inherently polysemous, versatile, and interpretive, especially concerning sociopolitical, ideological, and cultural viewpoints. The core argument of this dissertation is that given the characteristics and complexities of speech and the lack of evidence that can link an alleged hate speech to its harm, hate speech cases are adjudicated through a common sense or deference to legislative judgment approach, and not through deductive and evidence-based reasoning. By closely analyzing hate speech cases, this dissertation demonstrates that in Canada the adjudication of hate speech cases is excessively subjective and inconsistent. This dissertation examines the rippling effects of Canada’s hate speech legal regime by uncovering the intertwining of hate speech laws with politics, leading to the rise of a phenomenon termed ‘speech scare’ that imposes societal and cultural pressures on free expression, especially on controversial topics. Finally, the dissertation examines the discourse of online hate speech, revealing how excessive pressure for online communication moderation can have more detrimental effects on the right to freedom of expression and the right to privacy.
Open Access
From the Physical to the Digital Playground: Child Folklore in the COVID Era
(2023-03-28) Santyr, Jenna Leigh; Cowdy, Cheryl
In the fall of 2019, the places of childhood in North America became increasingly prohibited to the very populations they served. In response, children migrated more purposely to the digital playground. In this dissertation, I argue that children’s social interactions and cultural production have changed in appearance and organization within the virtual space but remain fundamentally rooted in the same folkloric traditions originally seen in the physical world. I base my argument on the premise that children’s technological practices do not occur outside of, nor are they separated from the cultural practices that occur on the physical playground, but that children’s social and cultural lives are transmediated (Terrell, 2015). Very little research has endeavoured to explore the evolution of folklore in an increasingly digital age. This dissertation attempts to ignite a re-examination of the intimate relationship between technology and folklore and shine a light on the often-overlooked digital participation of children. Using transmediated sociality theories, I argue that children’s play traditions and folklore harmoniously interact with popular culture and technology, while their online practices act as an extension of this playground folk tradition. Michel Foucault’s (1986) concept of heterotopia informs the analysis of children’s folklore from the physical to the digital playground and is the impetus for the concept of heterotopic transmediated play. The term considers the playground to be a discursive space that upsets and transforms the various spaces that converge within its boundaries, producing a form of play that is simultaneously fluid and placeless yet also stable and grounded. Folklore, as explored through the case studies of play, fandom, YouTube parodies, and TikTok dances, functions as the symbolic ‘glue’ for appropriating popular culture into play practices and children’s navigation of the digital space.
Open Access
Fugitive Phrases: Arcade Fire, Music, and the Amorous Subject
(2021-03-08) Allison, Stacy Michelle; Bailey, Steven C.
This dissertation asserts that passionate love is not a feeling, but a process of acculturation to a complete system of information. Niklas Luhmanns work on love as a system of communication is put in dialogue with the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan and Slavoj iek to demonstrate that music plays a vital role in the construction of amorous subjectivity in Western culture. The music of Canadian rock band Arcade Fire, with its concern with ideas of emotion and authenticity, provides a vehicle for revealing the process of becoming an amorous subject, such as the courtly lover; the relationship between music, love and memory, forgetting and time; the uncanny musical revenant, and the complications of sexuality. Luhmanns theory of passionate love as a system of communication and psychoanalytic analysis as developed by Lacan and iek are used to demonstrate the ways popular music forms an amorous semantic communication network. This system of communication works to resolve and enable the paradox that is passionate love. In this dissertation I develop Luhmanns theory of passionate love as a communication system alongside the theories of Lacan and iek to develop a form a theory of affective mapping, which is used in an analysis of several Arcade Fire songs. The first section of the dissertation sets out the area of study, defining and discussing ideas of love, indie rock music, and the overall methodological approach. Chapter two takes up the areas of psychoanalysis, and systems theory, leading the development of a theoretical framework that is deployed later the study. Chapters three and four focus on indie rock music, music scenes and Montreal, and Arcade Fire. Chapters five, six, and seven are comprised of case studies, each focusing on a different song and theoretical concern.
Open Access
"Generation 9/11": Canadian Muslim Youth Negotiating Nationalist and Sexual Subjectivities
(2018-11-21) Legault, Catherine Mary; Cumming, Peter E.
While much attention has been given to the impact on adult Muslims religious identities in the post-9/11 era, little research has been conducted on young Muslims who have grown up in this period. Moreover, the limited research on Muslim youths identity tends to focus almost exclusively on male aggression and female piety. In this dissertation, I argue that the repetition of these themes in both scholarly research and mainstream media serves to narrow an understanding of young Muslims identities, and functions to perpetuate stereotyped notions of young Muslims. I also argue that sexuality is hegemonically employed in North American national ideologies to construct Muslim sexuality as inferior to non-Muslim sexuality; however, until now, researchers have yet to examine its impact on young Muslims sexual subjectivities. I situate my study in the context of national ideology and particularly the shifts taking place in the post-9/11 context that underpin notions of belonging and citizenship. The idea of the nation includes regulations and restrictions for sexual crossingsthat is, good citizens should not have sex with the enemy Other (Nagel, 2003: 141-42). National belonging thus entails controlling the sexual practices of national members and defining acceptable sexual coupling. Accordingly, because terrorist-enemy constructions are frequently linked to Muslim identity, my study examines how this sexually racialized structuring affects young Canadian Muslims perceptions of national belonging and citizenship. I argue that these interrelated constructions of Muslim identity and national belonging have an impact on young Canadian Muslims sexual subjectivities and their perceptions of appropriate sexual coupling within a national context. Hence, this study simultaneously illuminates the links between Muslim sexual identity and perspectives of national belonging as well as stresses young Muslim identities as an under-researched area of Canadian identity politics.
Open Access
Glamour in the Good: Exhibiting Glamour's Expression in Toronto's Urban Imaginary
(2021-03-08) Franklin, Kathryn Ashley; Ingram, Susan
This dissertation examines the beguiling but illusory concept of glamour as a historical and aesthetic component of Torontos urban imaginary. In the years since William Howland, Torontos 25th mayor from 1886-87, coined the phrase Toronto the Good, Toronto has undeniably shed its good moniker and steadily positioned itself as a glamorous world-class city. This dissertation uses glamour as a prism to illustrate how the citys literature, art, fashion, music and film have contributed to Torontos emergence as a cosmopolitan global city. Alongside these art forms, this study uses a comparative analysis to examine how historical and cultural developments such as the construction of Casa Loma, the popularity of the 1926 Miss Toronto pageant, the 1960s counterculture of Yorkville, the celebrity of the Toronto International Film Festival, the aftermath of the 1990s recession and the rise in gentrification have helped to shape a unique expression of glamour for the city. Drawing upon archival materials, primary and secondary sources, and close readings, this dissertation charts a history of glamour in Toronto and demonstrates how Torontonians have continuously negotiated, courted, and challenged the expression of glamour in the city. This history reveals the role gender and sexual orientation have played in the rise of glamour in Toronto and the conditions that shape the way women, in particular, have accessed and experienced glamour in the city. Ultimately, these contexts shed light on the ways in which Torontonians have historically navigated the tensions between glamour and the good.
Open Access
Henry Langley, a Man Who Built Churches: Religion and Architecture in 19th-Century Ontario
(2016-11-25) Iron, Candace; Thurlby, Malcolm
Henry Langley (1836-1907), was the most prolific church architect for all denominations in what would become Ontario in the nineteenth century. This dissertation considers the church architecture of Henry Langley and his practice through an examination of the church designs and a close analysis of those works against the architectural literature and theories that were in existence in the nineteenth century. Central to the success of Langleys firm was his background in the Gothic Revival and architectural theory. Through his training with the Scottish-born architect William Hay (1818-88), Langley became familiar with the work of A.W.N. Pugin and ecclesiology. This theoretical foundation was almost certainly complimented by contemporary theory and printed pattern books regarding architectural style and church planning from Britain and the United States. Evidence of this resides in the fabric of Langleys churches, which are analyzed formally throughout this dissertation. Moreover, Langleys firm was a leader in the development of Gothic Revival architecture in nineteenth-century Ontario, designing large-scale city churches across the province, which used traditional forms in new and innovative manners to contend with urbanization and industrialized society. While tracing Langleys career from apprentice and student to successful architect and leader in professionalization, this dissertation examines Langleys role within the Gothic Revival movement of the nineteenth century locally, nationally, and internationally, and demonstrates how the churches that resulted from his practice are effective social and cultural texts that reveal their religious, social, and architectural associations, while reflecting the religious spirit of nineteenth-century Ontario culture.
Open Access
Horace Kallen Confronts America: Jewish Identity in Discursive Formation
(2017-07-27) Kaufman, Matthew Joseph; Lightman, Bernard V.; Brown, Michael
This study of the life and thought of American Jewish philosopher Horace Meyer Kallen (1882-1974) explores the discursive fields from which American Jewish modernity developed. Through a close analysis of Kallen's writings and relationships, of his engagement with print culture, and of his understanding of science and scientific culture, I describe one trajectory in the American Jewish community's discourses concerning science, religion, and secularism from the early twentieth century to mid-century. I trace how Kallen gained social capital through the popular press, and then used that capital to negotiate a new understanding of the place of Jews in America, becoming an architect of American Jewish ethnicity. I suggest that his importance as a theorist of ethnicity is located, in part, in his anticipation of current theoretical models. I contextualize Kallen within literary modernism, and suggest a new way to interpret his discursive interventions regarding America and democracy. I seek to recover Kallen's centrality to the social circulation of ideas concerning secularism and religion in America, and argue that his significance may be assessed by analyzing his deep and extended engagement with a number of prominent, public discourses. I contend that both the positive and negative responses to Kallen helped to establish the discursive frameworks in which Jewish ethnicity and its relationship to religion were debated. I conclude that Kallen's commitment to Jewish identity, seen as rooted in an evolving and diversified ethno-cultural process, is inextricably intertwined with the formative discourses of twentieth-century Jewish American life.
Open Access
Housework and Social Subversion: Wages, Housework, and Feminist Activism in 1970s Italy and Canada
(2017-07-27) Rousseau, Christina Adelina; Michaud, Jacinthe
My dissertation, Housework and Social Subversion: Wages, Housework, and Feminist Activism in 1970s Italy and Canada, presents a history of the Wages for Housework movements in Italy and Canada (1972-1978), looking at the parallel development of autonomist feminist politics in these locations. Based on a series of interviews with feminists involved in the movement, my dissertation highlights the significant political value in the way the groups theoretical perspective influenced our current understanding of social reproduction. Social reproduction refers to the unpaid activities associated with family and societal maintenance procreation, socialization, and nurturance as well as paid work in social sectors such as health care, education, childcare, and social services. In the context of Wages for Housework, my dissertation re-examines the movements understandings of wages, housework, and the gendered relations of production in the home. In critiquing the capitalist, patriarchal, imperialist nuclear family, they re-conceptualized wages and housework in a way that allowed for the uncovering of the most hidden aspect of housework: emotional labour and care. Looking at the parallel development of Wages for Housework movements in Italy and Canada, I also highlight the emergence of similar tensions regarding the demand for wages and the role of the working class housewife in their analyses. As Nicole Cox and Silvia Federici wrote, Our power as women begins with the social struggle for the wage, not to be let into the wage relation (for we were never out of it) but to be le out of it, for every sector of the working class to be left out of it (1975, 11). In light of the continued pervasiveness of care as work, this dissertation contributes to building a better understanding of social reproduction in a global context.
Open Access
Incorporating Children's Picturebooks on Mindfulness in Bibliotherapy
(2022-03-03) Danilewitz, Debra Anne; Orr, Deborah
Abstract Picturebooks are powerful forms of stories because the illustrations work in concert with text. In this dissertation, I explore how picturebooks are used in bibliotherapy to enhance and teach the concepts of mindfulness. I discuss bibliotherapy from a developmental and clinical perspective. Bibliotherapy is a medium that encourages school-aged children to express emotions to develop empathy and coping strategies for emotional wellness. This dissertation aims to examine the picturebooks used in bibliotherapy in educational and therapeutic contexts. Picturebooks, can often facilitate children's ability to deal with their emotional concerns and prepare children for life events. Incorporating children's picturebooks, teaching mindfulness, and promoting empathy development in children is crucial for emotional well-being and needs to be situated in the literature circle. In this dissertation, I explore how picturebooks can be used for therapeutic purposes and incorporated into educational and therapeutic contexts. The main objectives of bibliotherapy are to promote empathy development and emotional wellness in children. Through stories, children can learn about empathic responses to situations and, over time, grow in their empathy. Adults need to listen to childrens voices. Once adults have created a space to listen to children, they can use various picturebooks to access childrens emotional realm. Scholarly research has just begun to examine the literature on mindfulness as a window into childrens educational and therapeutic worlds. There is a growing body of literature on the effectiveness of mindfulness for children. My research will illuminate ways regarding teaching mindfulness to children. Picturebooks can help children develop the capacity to learn mindfulness strategies. It is widely acknowledged that children cannot practice mindfulness in the same way that adults do because their executive functioning is not fully developed. The Present, an interactive colouring book on mindfulness that I have written, focuses on allowing children to participate mindfully within a contemplative and performative capacity and will be discussed in this dissertation. Academic writing must tell a story. Even the most specialized academic writing, such as research reports, must tell a story. This dissertation tells a story of the therapeutic benefits of picture-books for children and childrens responses to these stories.