The horror film genre as an interpretive device in an adaptation of Tennessee Williams 's Suddenly last summer

As my thesis, I have made an adaptation for film of Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams. The play tells the story of a young woman, Catharine Holly, who has been institutionalized shortly after her return to New Orleans from a vacation on the island of Cabeza de Lobo. Her cousin, Sebastian, a wealthy poet and gay sex-tourist died on this trip. He was killed and partially eaten by a group of impoverished young men (at least some of these men were his former sexual partners). Sebastian's mother, Violet Venable - in the hopes of suppressing the true circumstances surrounding the death of her son - attempts to persuade an ambitious young doctor to lobotomize Catharine as the play opens. It should be noted that the horror film genre has greatly affected my thinking about this project, and I will be discussing three sub-genres of horror at some length: body horror, the slasher film, and race horror. The horror films and trends to be discussed come, in the main, from the period ranging from the late 1970s to the early 1990s and will, I think, be of great help in explaining certain choices I have made in the course of making this film. My main interest is determining whether the themes present in Williams's original text can be explored and expanded upon via recourse to the horror genre. Additionally, my film moves the action of Suddenly Last Summer from the New Orleans of the early half of the twentieth century to modem-day Cape Town. However, the action takes place in a sort of netherworld or blank space that serves as metaphor for both cinema and the white cube of the gallery. This choice of staging is meant to refer to Catharine's mention of the "blazing white wall" against which her cousin's body was thrown after his death. In fact, all throughout Catharine's description of how and why Sebastian died-and it must be remembered that it is this description that serves as the denouement of the play-mentions of white light, white heat, Sebastian's whiteness (as opposed to simply saying he looked pale), and the whiteness of the day itself are employed as a sort of leitmotif That Catharine uses "whiteness" in describing an incredibly violent chapter in her past is crucial to my understanding of the text and has helped me craft a cinematic strategy for my adaptation of this play. The violence and savagery that has marked Catharine's past has followed her into the present, just as it has followed her from the impoverished island of Cabeza de Lobo to the wealthy Garden District of New Orleans, and-if Violet Venable has her way-it will follow Catharine into her future. Taking the key descriptive element of that violent day in Cabeza de Lobo and using it to paint the world of Catharine's present will, I hope, make this connection clear

21st-Century Neo-Anticolonial Literature and the Struggle for a New Global Order

21st-century Neo-anticolonial Literature and the Struggle for a New Global Order explores the twenty-first-century fiction of five writers and investigates the ways in which their works engage the legacy and evolution of empire, and, in particular, the expansion of global capitalism to the detriment of already-subjugated communities. Taking up a recent call by Postcolonial scholars seeking to address the contemporary challenges of the postcolonial condition, this project traces out three distinct forms of engagement that function as a resistance in the texts. The dissertation introduces these concepts via a mode of analysis I have called Neo-anticolonialism, a counter-hegemonic approach which, I argue, is unique to the twenty-first century but rooted in the anticolonial work of Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon. Building on a foundation laid by those activist scholars, this project argues that Neo-anticolonialism necessitates the bridging of discourse and activism; thus, the dissertation delineates the utility of Neo-anticolonialism in both literary scholarship and practical application. Through a close analysis of the fiction of the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jamaican Michelle Cliff, Amitav Ghosh, a South Asian writer, African American writer Edward P. Jones, and Black British writer Caryl Phillips, the project offers a Neo-anticolonial reading of several twenty-first-century texts. In doing so, I explain the depiction of these instances of resistance as Neo-anticolonial Refractions, literary devices which function as prisms that cast images thus exposing the perpetuation of inequality in the twenty-first century and its direct link to the past epoch. Moreover, each chapter, through an explication of the refractions, reveals how resistance occurs in the face of the brutal reality of oppression and how this cadre of writers engages with the history of empire as well as with its contemporary permutations

For the "Dark Star": Reading Womanism and Black Womanhood in the Novels of Caryl Phillips.

Representations of black women in literature by black men received much critical attention in the latter part of the last century. Frances Smith Foster argued that “black men shared the nineteenth century predilection for defining women […] and for limiting the female protagonist” as seen in the works of the first African American novelist William Wells Brown, for example. Trudier Harris’s book length project, Black Women in the Fiction of James Baldwin, examined the literature of the twentieth century’s most impactful African American male writer and his precarious relationship with the portrayal of black women. More recently, Curdella Forbes’s From Nation to Diaspora: Sam Selvon, George Lamming and the Cultural Performance of Gender explored several depictions of women in Afro-Caribbean literature. Certainly, this area of study has not been exhausted, and in the case of Caryl Phillips, one of the most prolific writers in the African Diaspora today, the study of black womanhood in literature is exigent. Phillips’s work has already garnered much attention for its ability to authentically represent women’s voices. His novels Cambridge and The Nature of Blood, in particular, have been highly praised for their female narrators, and Phillips himself has discussed the ease with which he engages women’s voices. This essay aims to advance the study of Phillips’s unique and varied portrayal of women by analyzing his depiction of Black women in Dancing in the Dark, The Nature of Blood, and The Final Passage. The paper will explore how women in the world of Phillips’s texts navigate the physical and emotional spaces of intimacy in which their voices and experiences initially seem to be occluded by the men’s stories. I will argue that Phillips offers nuanced depictions of Black women which bend, break, and at times seem to reify well-established and often controversial literary archetypes of Blackness, revealing that his fiction functions in what Gary Lemons has describes as a Pro-Woman(ist) mode

Video art: accelerationism and the reification of desire

This research project explores the creative links between the production and circulation of video-based artworks and the dominance of capitalist-based forms of subjectivity. More specifically, I seek to determine whether digital video can be used in a manner that avoids complicity in the reification of desire. My use the word “desire” is borrowed from Gilles Deleuze for whom desire is a productive force that exists within and between various entities. By “reification of desire” I mean the method by which the cultural industries isolate and decontextualize elements of human social relations in an attempt to develop products that ostensibly satisfy the yearnings of the public. My research attempts to determine if this reification and commodification of desire can be resisted via aesthetic tactics such as allegory, masochism, and parody. I argue that these tactics may be viewed as components of an overarching strategy of accelerationism (Noys, Shaviro). In Chapter 1 (Video Economics), I explore video art’s position within the broader framework of the cultural industries. In Chapter 2 (Body Doubles), I formulate my methodological approach via an examination of masochism, allegory, and accelerationism. In my third and final chapter (Andrea Fraser’s Untitled), I bring the subjects of the first two chapters into relation via a discussion of Andrea Fraser’s artwork Untitled. While this is a written thesis, I also have an artistic practice that makes use of performance, creative writing, and video. Consequently, I briefly discuss my own creative work (in chapter 2) as a means of clarifying my intentions

T2 DC: Transitional Support for Adolescents with ASD

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is defined by the CDC as a developmental disorder within the brain5. Throughout the nation, 1 in 36 children experience ASD, boys being four times more prevalent than girls. ASD has nonbehavioral effects such as gastrointestinal (GI) disorders, seizures, or sleep disorders, amongst many other mental side effects1. Recent studies have associated a lack of resources with feelings of isolation, difficulty in accomplishing daily activities, and many more negative impacts for individuals with ASD. As ASD is lifelong, we want to facilitate a smooth transition into adulthood as there are limited resources in DC for young adults with autism. Due to the disproportionate number of resources in Wards 7 and 8, the location of a local library is best to incorporate more sites in the most impacted wards. Wards 7 and 8 have a majority of brown and black population who are more susceptible to an ASD diagnosis.https://hsrc.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/dchapp/1018/thumbnail.jp

High throughput sample introduction system for the analysis of drinking waters and wastewaters by ICP-MS

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Compartir los datos de investigación en ciencia: introducción al data sharing

The emergence in the scientific community of an initiative known as data sharing, consisting of sharing research data among researchers and aiming to maximize efforts and resources, is analysed. First, the concept of research data and the related technical difficulties depending on the discipline are reviewed. We also examine the motivations, origins and growth of this movement, which has had an important impact on the scientific community’s behaviour through the creation of reposi- tories and data banks, raising both technical and social challenges. Then we discuss leading funding agencies’ initiatives and scientific journals’ editorial policies promoting these practices. Finally, we examine the impact these major changes in researchers’ habits have for librarians, including the emergence of new professional profiles

Embryology and bony malformations of the craniovertebral junction

BACKGROUND: The embryology of the bony craniovertebral junction (CVJ) is reviewed with the purpose of explaining the genesis and unusual configurations of the numerous congenital malformations in this region. Functionally, the bony CVJ can be divided into a central pillar consisting of the basiocciput and dental pivot and a two-tiered ring revolving round the central pivot, comprising the foramen magnum rim and occipital condyles above and the atlantal ring below. Embryologically, the central pillar and the surrounding rings descend from different primordia, and accordingly, developmental anomalies at the CVJ can also be segregated into those affecting the central pillar and those affecting the surrounding rings, respectively. DISCUSSION: A logical classification of this seemingly unwieldy group of malformations is thus possible based on their ontogenetic lineage, morbid anatomy, and clinical relevance. Representative examples of the main constituents of this classification scheme are given, and their surgical treatments are selectively discussed