Browsing by Subject "France"
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Item 16th Century Cast-Bronze Ordnance at the Museu de Angra do Heroismo(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Hoskins, Sara GraceWithin the collections of the Museu de Angra do Heroismo (Terceira Island, Azores, Portugal) are nine cast bronze guns from the 16th century. Most were raised from the seafloor between the 1960s and 1990s, but this study comprises the first in-depth research into their design and manufacture. The importance of this kind of study lies in the fact that ordnance is commonly found on shipwrecks of this time. A greater knowledge of guns will help provide information about the ships from which they came. Careful documentation and study of the Museu de Angra cannon will add greatly to their value as museum exhibits, by allowing museum patrons to better understand where the guns came from, how they were cast, and why they were important. This documentation adds to our knowledge of Western European gunfounding technology during the sixteenth century, as four different countries commissioned the guns: Portugal, Spain, France, and England. With detailed documentation and publication, the Museu de Angra bronze guns can be added to the bibliography of ordnance of this period, which will aid future researchers who encounter similar pieces. The Museu de Angra bronze guns, as symbols of the military and naval power of the countries that commissioned them, were sent aboard ships, into the field, and mounted on fortress walls. Bronze guns of this time period are particularly important, as bronze was an expensive commodity, and the demand for ordnance was increasing rapidly. Countries developed more effective ways to make use of iron for the founding of guns, and the use of bronze became more symbolic of wealth. The information that each gun contains includes both the cutting-edge military technology of the time and the artistic statement of the founder. Some of the finest metalwork of the period was displayed in cast bronze guns, and due to the founding techniques, no two are the same, making each an important piece of history.Item A-AVOIR Resistance : a cross cultural study of sexual citizenship in North America and France(2012-05) Batiste, Dominique Pierre; Strong, Pauline Turner, 1953-; Speed, Shannon, 1964-; Johnson, MichaelWhat forms of resistance are gay men in France and North America enacting against heteronormativity and homophobia? And why are they enacting these particular forms of resistance? To answer these questions, this thesis aims to draw connections between gay men's resistance strategies and larger socio-political phenomena in both France and North American cultures. First I focus on the discursive construction of citizens, both heterosexual and homosexual, in order to illustrate how gay men are relegated to second-class citizenship based on their sexual identities and practices. My focus, here, is cultural citizenship and sexual citizenship, two themes that run throughout this thesis. Next, I use Foucault's theories of knowledge-power to reveal how power relations in society discursively create subject positions, such as 'homosexuals' and 'heterosexuals', utilizing structures of control, norms, rewards, and punishments in order to champion heterosexuality to the detriment of homosexuality. In order to contest exercises of power, gay men engage in acts of resistance. i examine scholarly debates centered on resistance, and create a list of criterion for overt resistance, which I dub A AVOIR Resistance on account that it includes the characteristics of Action, Alternatives, Visibility, Opposition, Intent, and Recognition. Utilizing my rubric for overt resistance, as well as Foucault's notions of power, I analyze interview transcripts from a sample of gay men in North America and France to reveal that some gay men, living outside of large metropolitan areas, are rejecting hegemonic ideals of 'gayness' and integrating into mainstream heteronormative society. These men are creating what I call 'authentic communities' where many individuals from various backgrounds and lifestyles live together harmoniously based primarily on access to resources rather than identity markers such as sexual identity. this research shows a split between the ways that urban and suburban gay men embody their homosexuality. Since research on gay men focuses on those living in urban areas, my research calls, instead, for focus on suburban gay men and their resistance to homo-normative ideologies of what it means to me gay.Item Between boulevard and boudoir : working women as urban spectacle in nineteenth-century French and British literature(2011-08) Erbeznik, Elizabeth Anne; Wettlaufer, Alexandra; MacKay, Carol; Wilkinson, Lynn; Coffin, Judith; Bergman-Carton, JanisBetween Boulevard and Boudoir examines the nineteenth-century obsession with documenting the modern metropolis and analyses visual and verbal portraits of working women to investigate how urban literature invented the seamstress as a type. Approaching the nineteenth-century city as a site of passive voyeurism where social relationships were increasingly mediated by print culture, I argue that sketches of French grisettes and British sempstresses replaced the endless variety among working-class women with a repetitive sameness through the fictionalization of these urban figures. Transforming producers of commodities into objects of consumption, popular fiction showcased the visibility of the city’s working women while ignoring their actual labor. These women were thus portrayed as exploited bodies, rather than exploited workers, destined to adorn, and then disappear into, the crowded city. This dissertation looks first at what Walter Benjamin dubbed “panoramic literature” — texts that sought to describe the metropolis and its inhabitants through a categorization of people and places based on appearances — and asserts that these fragmentary depictions created a widely recognizable urban typology that gained cultural currency and, ultimately, influenced other authors. Analyzing French and British urban text, I maintain, however, that even the most stereotyped representations destabilized the structures of classification that defined the working woman as a type. While novelists Eugène Sue, G.W.M. Reynolds, Charles Dickens, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning all seem to valorize self-supporting women, I demonstrate that, by turning their workers into wives and expelling them from the city, they discredit the premise of an urban destiny that confined these women to a type. This examination of the unique position of working women in Paris and London not only challenges established notions about nineteenth-century constructions of gender but also provides insight into the anxieties – vis-à-vis the rapidly changing city – that plagued the writers who codified these women as types. Investigating the fictionalization of working women, this study opens up urban literature to considerations of how gender and class determine inclusion within the city as it was produced by print culture.Item Class, Authority, and the Querelle des Femmes: A Women's Community of Resistance in Early Modern Europe(2010-10-12) Lawrence, Dana EatmanThis dissertation examines the poetry of Isabella Whitney, a maidservant in London, Veronica Franco, a Venetian courtesan, Marie de Romieu, a baker's daughter in rural France, and Aemilia Lanyer, the daughter and wife of Italian immigrant musicians in London, all of whom attempted to create communities of learned and literary women within their texts. In their works, all four women boldly reject the misogyny prevalent in early modern culture; however, they do so without being able to withdraw from the culture that contributed to such rhetoric, thereby writing from the periphery. In her essay, "Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness," bell hooks identifies this position on the edge as one of opportunity. She argues that the very presence of the Other "within the culture of domination" is in itself a threat. As such, existing on the margins of that culture is unsafe and requires a "community of resistance" to turn that space into "a site of radical possibility." I argue that these four writers, marginalized by virtue of their sex as well as by their social positions, were united in a community of resistance through their participation in the querelle des femmes, a centuries-long debate about women's place in society. Each recognizes class, gender, and geographical hierarchies as social constructions and presents her own imagined resistant community of women within her work--each authorizing her own voice as they collectively rewrite women's history. As an international community of resistance, the works of these women may be seen as prefiguring contemporary debates about gender, community, and globalization. By examining the early modern querelle des femmes through the lens of postmodern feminism, this dissertation shows that, despite all of the historical models that position early modern European women as physically, politically, historically, and legally subordinate within their respective cultures, there existed a women's community of resisstance that not only refused to accept this inferior status but also recognized education and cooperation as a source of power.Item Comparative population policy(2011-05) Hardy, David McGrath; Wilson, Robert Hines; Stolp, ChandlerIn the last thirty years an increasing number of governments are taking an interest in the growth rate and age structure of their populations. The chief concern among advanced economies is that pay-as-you-go pension and health care systems for the elderly will be unsustainable as the ratio of younger workers to older beneficiaries shrinks from aging populations. Resistance to reforms such as reduced or delayed benefits, or higher taxes has focused attention on a third option, growing the working-age population. There is a growing consensus on the economic benefits of population growth, a reversal from the 1960s through 80s. Governments try to grow the population through incentives for more children and/or accepting more immigrants. This report compares the population policies of Singapore, the United States, France, and Japan to analyze governments' motives and policy outcomes. Middle-income nations like China and Brazil can learn from the experiences of developed nations to avoid the same predicament in the future. Each government's mix of fertility incentives, immigrants, and guest workers is a product of their economic and political circumstances. The surest way to grow the population, accepting immigrants, is usually the least popular. The most popular is the most unproven, providing benefits for larger families. There is no consensus what the most effective fertility incentives are. Population policy has never been just about the economy, it is steeped in political and cultural visions. Shedding that political baggage is a prerequisite to a more rational, sustainable policy approach to demography.Item Educating Lyon’s poor : children, charity, and commerce in the seventeenth century(2011-05) Gossard, Julia Morrow; Hardwick, Julie, 1962-; Frazier, AlisonThough the establishment of educational institutions is not necessarily surprising in Counter Reformation France as the church was obliged to foster education, what was innovative about Lyon’s écoles de charité is that “professional education” was stressed alongside Catholic doctrine in the seventeenth century. Catering to Lyon’s poor youth, these schools taught proper Catholic comportment, reading, writing, counting, and the acquisition of craft skills. Official and unofficial records reveal the charity schools’ daily practices and pedagogical exercises as well as the goals of the state, church, and local elite in fostering and supporting these institutions. The schools molded children into “moral, productive workers and faithful subjects” who could act as agents of the state, church, and community. Students had the responsibility of “elevating the morality, Christianity, and education” of their families, improving the “lower sorts” literally from the bottom-up. This thesis also addresses parents’ incentives in sending their children to these institutions. This projects spans several historiographies including that of early modern education, childhood, and the Catholic Reformation. Though other studies have mentioned the establishment of écoles de charité as part of a wider impulse of charitable giving spurred by the Catholic Reformation, little work exists on the schools’ specific dynamics or on the relationship to the state and community embedded in the routine life of these schools. Additionally, this project uses “childhood” as a category of historical analysis, investigating how different early modern social groups used children to change society. Finally, this project engages the Catholic Reformation as these schools were part of a larger project to expand knowledge of Catholic beliefs onto the people propelled by local as well as elite interests.Item From the countryside and city to the edges and interstices : places and spaces of the quotidien in contemporary French film and literature(2013-05) Jones, Claire Catherine; Wettlaufer, AlexandraThis dissertation examines the use of the quotidien (the everyday) in contemporary French film and literature to understand its relationship with notions of place and space. Defined as the paradoxical process of how one repeatedly constructs each day "anew" on a routine basis, the quotidien in the texts of my analysis is not static, but rather a means for articulating changes in French communities and ways of life, while further reflecting ongoing changes to attitudes, politics, and identity. I advance current readings of the quotidien by viewing it as both descriptive, a recurring manifestation of change, as well as transformative, able to effect change. I argue that, in these depictions, the quotidien effectively erodes traditional spatial categories to create and reveal new and less stable versions. Specifically, places lose their real and symbolic sway to indeterminate spaces in which meaning is uncertain, in flux, or non-existent. My dissertation is novel for its interest in tracing the quotidien across spatial categories, so that its chapters move from the more "stable" categories of the rural and the urban to those in more obvious flux, edges and interstices. Chapter 1 studies the depicted quotidiens of rural France in Agnès Varda's film, Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000), and Raymond Depardon and Claudine Nougare's film series, Profils paysans (2000-2008). Chapter 2 investigates the quotidiens of urban centers in Cédric Klapisch's film, Chacun cherche son chat (1996), Patrick Modiano's novel, Dora Bruder (1997), and Laurent Cantet's film, Entre les murs (2008). Chapter 3 examines everyday France at the periphery of Paris in Gérard Gavarry's novel, Hop là! Un deux trois (2001). The Conclusion addresses the emergence of a new space, the interstitial, in which its dwellers float, move, or exist between places on a daily basis, such as a commute to work. I analyze Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas's short film, Loin du 16ème (2006), Abdellatif Kechiche's film, La Graine et le mulet (2007), and Alain-Paul Mallard's film, L'Origine de la tendresse (1999). These mini-ethnographies of French society reveal a France grappling with issues related to globalization, shifting populations, the relative newness of the European Union, and consequently, identity. Who is French, and where does "authentic France" lie?Item The Gradual of St. Yrieix in eleventh-century Aquitaine(2011-05) Sherrill, William Manning; Nardini, Luisa; Dell'Antonio, Andrew; Frazier, Alison; Olivieri, Guido; Tusa, Michael C.During the eleventh century the Aquitanian monastery of St. Yrieix, located forty kilometers south of Limoges, acquired a new gradual, a manuscript containing the liturgical Mass chants for the year. The Gradual of St. Yrieix, now at the Paris Bibliothèque Nationale (Pa903), includes both text and music, redacted with the musical notation typical of the region of Aquitaine. The objective of this research is to analyze Pa903 as a document of liturgical musical practice and as a participant in the historical events of its region and time. While the Gregorian chant repertory dominates the gradual, this dissertation addresses the neo-Gregorian chants of Pa903, composed in the period following the dissemination of Gregorian chant throughout Europe. These neo-Gregorian chants were open to the influence of the contemporary regional musical style and cultural traditions surrounding St. Yrieix. Chapter II reviews the backdrop of historical events surrounding Pa903, focusing on the reform and expansion at St. Yrieix and its transition from a monastery to a chapter of canons. The musical and liturgical characteristics of Pa903 (Chapter III) show that St. vii Yrieix favored its senior patron St. Martin of Tours and St. Aredius (its patron saint) above St. Martial of Limoges (a powerful neighbor) and presented in the gradual a community of saints with strong regional influence. Chapters IV and V analyze the concordances of antiphons, tropes, prosulas, prosas, and neo-Gregorian Mass chants of Pa903 with those of the Aquitanian graduals and other sources throughout Europe. The tropes of the Proper and Ordinary, the complete repertory of prosulas and prosas, and the neo-Gregorian Mass chants of Pa903 are collected together here for the first time outside of Pa903. The neo-Gregorian chants are found in the sanctoral, temporal, and the ritual Masses and include a group of chants that reflects textual and musical elements of the prior Gallican tradition. The chant repertory of the gradual also presents a subgroup of forty-nine antiphons, prosas, prosulas, and neo-Gregorian Mass chants found only in Pa903, documented here with musical examples.Item Heavy Metal Humor: Reconsidering Carnival in Heavy Metal Culture(2013-06-05) Powell, Gary BottsWhat can 15th century France and heavy metal have in common? In Heavy Metal Humor, Gary Powell explores metal culture through the work of Mikael Bakhtin?s ?carnivalesque theory.? Describing the practice of inverting commonly understood notions of respectability and the increasing attempts to normalize them, Bakhtin argues that carnivals in Francois Rabelais? work illustrate a sacrilegious uprising by the peasant classes during carnival days against dogmatic aristocrats. Powell asserts that Rabelais? work describes cartoonish carnivals that continue in as exaggerated themes and tropes into other literary styles, such as comedy and horror that ultimately inform modern-day metal culture. To highlight the similarities of Bakhtin?s interpretation of Rabelais? work to modern-day metal culture, Powell draw parallels to between Bakhtin?s carnivalesque theory and metal culture with two different, exemplary ?humorous? metal performances, GWAR and Anal Cunt. Powell chooses ?humorous? metal groups because, to achieve their humor, they exaggerate tropes, and behaviors in metal culture. To this end, Powell explores metal culture through GWAR, a costumed band who sprays their audience with fake body fluids as they decapitate effigies. He points out examples of Rabelais? work which Bakhtin uses to describe carnivalesque tropes, and threads them to modern-day metal culture. Powell then indicates how carnivalesque performances amplify with Anal Cunt, a ?satirical? hateful, grindcore group. In the band?s performance which is both serious and humorous at once, Anal Cunt draws on several carnivalesque behaviors. To dissect this band?s performance, Powell augments Bakhtin?s carnivalesque theory with Richard Schechner?s theory of ?dark play? and Johan Huizinga?s ?play communities? to more describe and illustrate why some aspects of modern-day metal culture do not match Bakhtin?s theory based on medieval French literature. However, carnivalesque humor becomes ambiguous and social and political problems arise as it escalates. As disrespectability is promoted, social and political tensions surface. Countering Bakhtin?s utopian notion of carnivalesque uprising, Powell highlights how socio-political turmoil presents itself in carnivalesque performance by referring to examples of confusion and concern regarding racism and sexism, something left unexplored in Bakhtin?s work. Powell suggests expanding and modernizing Bakhtin?s carnival could open pathways toward solutions to carnival culture?s socio-political ills.Item The language attitudes of second-generation North Africans in France : the effects of religiosity and national identity(2015-08) Oprea, Megan Grace; Bullock, Barbara E.; Blyth, Carl; Wettlaufer, Alexandra; Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline; Brower, BenjaminThis dissertation explores the language attitudes (LAs) of second-generation North African immigrants in France toward Arabic and French, focusing primarily on women. I explore how these attitudes are correlated with religiosity, national identity and proficiency. Although numerous LA studies have been done in the Maghreb, none have examined the attitudes of the highly marginalized North African community in France. Previous research in LAs and in sociolinguistics has also neglected religion as a variable, a gap in the literature that this dissertation addresses. French and Arabic have powerful language ideologies making them an ideal language pairing to study. Muslims believe Arabic is the only language through which the true message of the Qur’an can be transmitted (Suleiman, 2003). Previous LA studies in the Maghreb indicate that people there strongly associate Islam with Arabic (Benrabah 2007; Chakrani, 2010). It is also the national language of most Muslim majority countries and is linked with both national and pan-Arab identity (Dawisha, 2003). The French language is seen as the vehicle of French culture and is an important symbol of national identity that is used as a tool for the assimilation of immigrants (Weil, 2010). There is evidence to suggest that LAs are stronger in a diaspora context (Garrett, Bishop & Coupland, 2009). Language attitudes may be especially potent for the North African diaspora because of the colonial history between France and the Maghreb, and the strained relationship between France and its immigrant population. Given that language can act as a symbol of culture (Choi, 2003), participants who more closely identify with their North African cultural and religious heritage will express more positive attitudes toward Arabic. In order to explore these topics, I constructed an anonymous language attitudes survey that was distributed online to second-generation North Africans in France, ages 18 to 30. The survey included questions concerning attitudes toward religious and national identity. The results indicate positive attitudes toward Arabic, Islam and North Africa, while expressing relatively neutral attitudes toward French, and negative attitudes toward France. Correlations did emerge that suggest a relationship between religiosity, national identity, and language attitudes for this population.Item Limits of European Islam: Turkish Islamic organizations' responses to host country policies in France and Germany(2014-05) Arkilic, Zekiye Ayca; Givens, Terri E., 1964-; Freeman, Gary P.Through an analysis of three key Turkish Islamic umbrella organizations operating in France and Germany, this paper discusses how Turkish Muslims practice, redefine, and respond to citizenship, integration, and church-state policies engineered by host states. Relying on a detailed examination of governmental and organizational publications, media reports, and semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with organization leaders as well as French and German policy-makers, this study draws attention to the gap between normative legal rights reserved for Muslims and their implementation in practice. While the existing literature provides mixed conclusions with respect to the accommodation of Muslim religious rights in France and Germany, I argue that the Turkish Islamic organizations are more critical of host state policies in Germany than in France. First, even though the constitutional setting demands a strict separation of state and religion in France, in reality, rules are relaxed in a way to provide benefits to Muslim groups. In contrast, while the constitution is more liberal in Germany, this flexibility has not led to accommodating policies in practice. Moreover, for Turkish Muslims in both France and Germany, the French Council for the Muslim Faith is regarded as a more legitimate and democratic institution. The German Islam Conference, on the other hand, is criticized for excluding important Islamic organizations, creating a distinction between “good Muslims” and “bad Muslims,” and placing more emphasis on security and terrorism in its working groups. Germany’s federal system, and its excessive state intervention in theology institutes and Islamic religious courses are other factors that shape how Turkish Muslims respond to, and interact with policy-makers in their host countries.Item Resisting globalization- ATTAC in France: local discourses, global terrain(Texas A&M University, 2007-04-25) Leonard, Marie des NeigesThe debate over the "globalization" process has been influenced by the emergence of social movements who deplore this process. This research focuses on the French social movement ATTAC (Action for a Tobin Tax for the Aid of Citizens), that criticizes the problematic effects of globalization and of the new European constitutional order. This study contends that anti-globalization movements, such as ATTAC, are not only resisting what is perceived as an unjust economic system (neo-liberal globalization), but also what they perceive as cultural uniformization, or a threat to cultural identity and cultural diversity. I substantiate this claim by studying the membership of ATTAC: through qualitative research, including interviews and observations, I show the multiplicity of discourses in which members address the anti-globalization issue. This study will contribute to the research on transnational social movements, as it demonstrates the prevalence of culture and identity concerns over globalization, something that has been overlooked by previous studies of anti-globalization movements.Item Significance of humor in works by Maghrebi writers : Y.B., Faïza Guène, and Fellag(2006-05) Mortimer, Heather Leigh; Sherzer, DinaThis thesis focuses on the role of humor in three contemporary Maghrebi novels: Allah Superstar by Y.B. (2003), Kiffe kiffe demain (2004) by Faiza Guene, and Comment reussir un bon petit couscous (2003) by Fellag, Y.B., Guene and Fellag create and invent humor through their use of irony, references and language. They aim their derision at specific issues, value systems and ideologies that threaten, exploit, victimize and discriminate against those who are labeled different. In Allah Superstar, Y.B. makes fun of religion and religious fundamentalism, in Kiffe kiffe demain Faiza Guene derides France's socio-political system that continues to fail at integrating its large population of North African immigrants, and finally in Comment reussir un bon petit cous cous Fellag jokes about politics and international relations between France and the Maghreb. These texts are very important to contemporary France because they raise questions, not only to entertain, but they also teach and inform on certain political and polemical issues that touch French society today.Item The United States Military Assistance Advisory Group in French Indochina, 1950-1956(2012-02-14) Weber, Nathaniel R.This thesis examines the American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) sent to French Indochina, from 1950 to 1956, when the United States provided major monetary and material aid to the French in their war against the communist Viet Minh. MAAG observed French units in the field and monitored the flow of American materiel into the region. Relying upon primary research in the National Archives, the thesis departs from previous interpretations by showing that MAAG held generally positive assessments of France?s performance in Indochina. The thesis also argues that MAAG personnel were more interested in getting material support to the French, than in how that material was used, to the point of making unrealistic assessments of French combat abilities. By connecting primary research with the greater history of Cold War American military assistance, the thesis contributes to the scholarship on American involvement in Vietnam.Item “You know Haitians…” : the challenges of community organizing among the Haitian diaspora in Paris, France(2014-08) Chanel-Blot, Mitsy Anne; Gordon, Edmund TayloeThis dissertation focuses on the experiences of Haitians living in France who are active in organizations seeking to benefit Haiti. Focusing on “hometown associations”—collectives formed by members of the diaspora who are generally from the same town, that engage in activities and projects for the benefit of their home country—my main question is how do a group of Haitians, committed to transnational engagement between France and Haiti, manage the challenges, pressures, and expectations in being a “diaspora” in light of the category’s increasing institutionalization? Previous research has examined the impact of hometown associations in nations such as Mexico, but I sought to understand their importance in the context of personal, national, and international agendas, agendas that often neutralize or undermine the purpose of hometown associations. Despite increasing attention by national and international policy makers citing diasporas as integral to the survival and growth of struggling nations, my research shows that there is little support given to such collectivities, especially in the case of the Haitian diaspora. I argue that diaspora as a category has become more institutionalized, and as a result is inhibiting progressive, grassroots change more that it empowers. My research hopes to highlight this trend so that policy makers and humanitarians can take a step back to better identify the future of diaspora as a geopolitical force for change in countries like Haiti, and gauge whether it can still function under the weight of its signification.