Shooting from the Wild Zone : A Study of the Chicana Art Photographers Laura Aguilar, Celia Álvarez Muñoz, Delilah Montoya, and Kathy Vargas

The dissertation analyzes and elaborates upon the changing map of U.S. ethno-racial formation from the vantage point of North American Studies, multi-disciplinary cultural studies, and the criticism of visual culture. The focus is on four contemporary Mexican American (Chicana) women photographers, whose art production is discussed, on the one hand, in the context of the Euro-American history of photographic genres and, on the other hand, in the context of so-called decolonizing cultural and academic discourses produced by Mexican Americans themselves. The manuscript consists of two parts. Part I outlines the theoretical and methodological domain of the study, positioning it in the interstices of American studies, European postmodern criticism, postcolonial feminist theory, and the theories of visual culture, particularly of art photography. In addition, the main issues and paradigms of Chicano Studies (Mexican American ethnic studies) are introduced. Part II consists of seven essays, each of which discusses rather independently a particular photographic work or a series of photographs, formulating and defending arguments about their meaning, position in the history of photographic genres, and their cultural and socio-political significance. The study closes with a discussion about ethno-racial identity formation and the role of Chicana photography therein - in embodying and reproducing new subjectivities, alternative categories of knowledge, and open ended historical narratives. It is argued that, symbolically, the "Wild Zone" of gendered and race-specific knowledge becomes associated with the body of the mother, a recurrent image in Chicana art works under discussion. Embedded in this image, the construction of an alternative notion of a family thus articulates the parameters of a matrifocal ethno-racial community unified by the proliferation of differences rather than by conformities typical of nationalistic ideologies. While focusing on art photography, the study as a whole simultaneously constructs, from a European vantage point, a "thick" description of Mexican American history, identities, communities, cultural practices, and self-representations about which very little is known in Finland.

Japanese Video Game Localization : A Case Study of Sony's Sairen Series

This thesis is a comparative case study in Japanese video game localization for the video games Sairen, Sairen 2 and Sairen Nyûtoransurêshon, and English-language localized versions of the same games as published in Scandinavia and Australia/New Zealand. All games are developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and published exclusively for Playstation2 and Playstation3 consoles. The fictional world of the Sairen games draws much influence from Japanese history, as well as from popular and contemporary culture, and in doing so caters mainly to a Japanese audience. For localization, i.e. the adaptation of a product to make it accessible to users outside the original market it was intended for in the first place, this is a challenging issue. Video games are media of entertainment, and therefore localization practice must preserve the games’ effects on the players’ emotions. Further, video games are digital products that are comprised of a multitude of distinct elements, some of which are part of the game world, while others regulate the connection between the player as part of the real world and the game as digital medium. As a result, video game localization is also a practice that has to cope with the technical restrictions that are inherent to the medium. The main theory used throughout the thesis is Anthony Pym’s framework for localization studies that considers the user of the localized product as a defining part of the localization process. This concept presupposes that localization is an adaptation that is performed to make a product better suited for use during a specific reception situation. Pym also addresses the factor that certain products may resist distribution into certain reception situations because of their content, and that certain aspects of localization aim to reduce this resistance through significant alterations of the original product. While Pym developed his ideas with mainly regular software in mind, they can also be adapted well to study video games from a localization angle. Since modern video games are highly complex entities that often switch between interactive and non-interactive modes, Pym’s ideas are adapted throughout the thesis to suit the particular elements being studied. Instances analyzed in this thesis include menu screens, video clips, in-game action and websites. The main research questions focus on how the games’ rules influence localization, and how the games’ fictional domain influences localization. Because there are so many peculiarities inherent to the medium of the video game, other theories are introduced as well to complement the research at hand. These include Lawrence Venuti’s discussions of foreiginizing and domesticating translation methods for literary translation, and Jesper Juul’s definition of games. Additionally, knowledge gathered from interviews with video game localization professionals in Japan during September and October 2009 is also utilized for this study. Apart from answering the aforementioned research questions, one of this thesis’ aims is to enrich the still rather small field of game localization studies, and the study of Japanese video games in particular, one of Japan’s most successful cultural exports.

Abductive translation studies : The art of marshalling signs

This dissertation contributes to the fields of theoretical translation studies, semiotic translation theory, and the semiotics of translation. The aim of this work is to explore the alternative and potential which the semiotic approaches to translation entail from the viewpoint of contemporary translation studies. The overall objective is thus to show that a general semiotic translation theory, and in particular, a Peircean translation theory, are possible and indispensable. Furthermore, this study contributes to the semiotranslational approach and to its theory-building by developing the concept of abductive translation (studies). The specific theoretical frame of reference adopted in this study is provided by the semiotranslation introduced by Dinda L. Gorlée. This approach is primarily based on the semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 1914), and aims at a fusion of semiotics and translation studies. A more general framework is provided by the threefold background and material: the published and unpublished writings of Peirce, Peirce scholarship and Peircean-semiotic publications, as well as the translation-theoretical literature. Part One of this study concentrates on the justification, existence, and nature of the semiotic approaches to translation. This part provides a historical survey, a status report, and a discussion of this area of research, by employing the findings in a boundary-clearing that is multilayered both conceptually and terminologically. Part Two deals with Peircean semiotranslation. Here Gorlée s semiotranslational research is examined by focusing on the starting points, features, and development of semiotranslation. Attention is also paid to the state-of-the-art of semiotranslation theory and to the possibilities for future elaborations. Part Three focuses on the semiotranslational claim that translation is an abductive activity. The concept of abductive translation is based on abduction, one of Peirce s three modes of reasoning; at the same time Firstness, the category of abduction, becomes foregrounded. So abductive translation as a form of possibilistic translation receives here an extensive theoretical discussion by citing examples in which abduction manifests itself as (scientific) reasoning and as everyday contemplation. During this treatise, translation is first equated with sign action, then with interpretation and finally with reasoning. All these approaches appear to embody different facets of the same phenomenon Peirce s ubiquitous semiosis, and they all suggest that translation is inherently an intersemiotic activity in which a sign is inferred from another sign. Translation is therefore semiosis, semiosis is translation and interpretation, interpretation is reasoning, and so on ad infinitum all being manifestations of the art of marshalling signs. The three parts of this study are linked by the overall goal of abductive translation studies: investigation into abductive translation develops the theory of semiotranslation, and this enrichment of semiotranslation in turn constructs a semiotic paradigm within translation studies.

The Art of Sympathy : Forms of Moral and Emotional Persuasion in Fiction

"The Art of Sympathy: Forms of Moral and Emotional Persuasion" in Fiction is an interdisciplinary study that looks closely at the ways that stories evoke sympathy, and the significance of this emotion for the development of moral attitudes and awareness. By linking readers' emotional responses to fiction with the potential impact of such responses on "the moral imagination," the study builds on empirical research conducted by literary scholars and psychologists into the emotional effects of reading fiction, as well as social psychological research into the connections between empathy/sympathy and moral development. I first investigate the dynamics of readers beliefs regarding characters in fictional narratives, and the nature of the emotions that they may experience as a result of those beliefs. The analysis demonstrates that there are important similarities between real emotions and emotions generated by fiction. Recognizing these similarities, I claim, can help us to conceptualize the nature of sympathetic responses to fictional characters. Building on these assertions, I then draw on research from social psychology and philosophy to develop a comprehensive definition of sympathy and to clarify the ways in which sympathy operates, both in people s daily lives and in readers sympathetic responses to fictional characters. Having established this definition and delineated its practical implications, I then examine how particular stories, through a variety of narrative techniques, persuade readers to feel sympathy for characters who are unsympathetic in certain ways. In order to verify my claims about the impact of these stories on readers emotions, I also review the results of tests that I conducted with nearly 200 adolescent readers. Through these tests, which were constructed and scored according to methods prevalent in social psychological research, it was determined that a majority of readers felt sympathy for the protagonists in two of the stories included in the study. These results were combined with data from an additional test, a standard measure of empathy and sympathy in the field of social psychology. The cross-tabulation of these results suggests that there was not a strong connection between readers responses and their general tendencies to feel sympathy for others. This finding would appear to support my hypotheses regarding the sympathetic persuasiveness of the stories in question. In light of these results, finally, I consider the potential contribution that fiction can make to adolescent emotional and moral development and the implications of that potential for future language arts curricula in the schools. In particular, I suggest the pedagogical importance of providing adolescents with opportunities to engage with the lives of fictional characters, and especially to experience feelings of sympathy for individuals towards whom they ordinarily might feel aversion.

Encounters with the Virtual : The Experience of Art In Gilles Deleuze's Philosophy

My thesis concerns the notion of existence as an encounter, as developed in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze (1925 1995). What this denotes is a critical stance towards a major current in Western philosophical tradition which Deleuze nominates as representational thinking. Such thinking strives to provide a stable ground for identities by appealing to transcendent structures behind the apparent reality and explaining the manifest diversity of the given by such notions as essence, idea, God, or totality of the world. In contrast to this, Deleuze states that abstractions such as these do not explain anything, but rather that they need to be explained. Yet, Deleuze does not appeal merely to the given. He sees that one must posit a genetic element that accounts for experience, and this element must not be naïvely traced from the empirical. Deleuze nominates his philosophy as transcendental empiricism and he seeks to bring together the approaches of both empiricism and transcendental philosophy. In chapter one I look into the motivations of Deleuze s transcendental empiricism and analyse it as an encounter between Deleuze s readings of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. This encounter regards, first of all, the question of subjectivity and results in a conception of identity as non-essential process. A pre-given concept of identity does not explain the nature of things, but the concept itself must be explained. From this point of view, the process of individualisation must become the central concern. In chapter two I discuss Deleuze s concept of the affect as the basis of identity and his affiliation with the theories of Gilbert Simondon and Jakob von Uexküll. From this basis develops a morphogenetic theory of individuation-as-process. In analysing such a process of individuation, the modal category of the virtual becomes of great value, being an open, indeterminate charge of potentiality. As the virtual concerns becoming or the continuous process of actualisation, then time, rather than space, will be the privileged field of consideration. Chapter three is devoted to the discussion of the temporal aspect of the virtual and difference-without-identity. The essentially temporal process of subjectification results in a conception of the subject as composition: an assemblage of heterogeneous elements. Therefore art and aesthetic experience is valued by Deleuze because they disclose the construct-like nature of subjectivity in the sensations they produce. Through the domain of the aesthetic the subject is immersed in the network of affectivity that is the material diversity of the world. Chapter four addresses a phenomenon displaying this diversified indentity: the simulacrum an identity that is not grounded in an essence. Developed on the basis of the simulacrum, a theory of identity as assemblage emerges in chapter five. As the problematic of simulacra concerns perhaps foremost the artistic presentation, I shall look into the identity of a work of art as assemblage. To take an example of a concrete artistic practice and to remain within the problematic of the simulacrum, I shall finally address the question of reproduction particularly in the case recorded music and its identity regarding the work of art. In conclusion, I propose that by overturning its initial representational schema, phonographic music addresses its own medium and turns it into an inscription of difference, exposing the listener to an encounter with the virtual.

Focus on Form : J. J. Tikkanen, Giotto and Art Research in the 19th Century

My doctoral dissertation is on Johan Jakob Tikkanen (1857 1930), the first professor of art history in Finland, and his significance and methods in the context of late 19th and early 20th-century European art history. Tikkanen was one of the pioneering scholars in the field of medieval art research, and, along with Anton Springer, Heinrich Wölfflin, Aloïs Riegl, Adolfo Venturi, Franz Wickhoff, Julius von Schlosser, Aby Warburg, Emile Mâle and others, one of the scholars who defined art history as an independent academic discipline. Tikkanen s scholarly interests and his methods resemble those of many formalistically oriented German and Austrian art historians of his time. He became well known throughout Europe, mainly for his studies on illustrated medieval manuscripts. Tikkanen s dissertation, Der Malerische Styl Giotto s Versuch zu einer Characteristik Desselben, from 1884 was regarded in its day as the best form-analytical study on the painter. It has a central position in the present thesis, as it already included nearly all the methods that Tikkanen used and elaborated upon throughout his career. Giotto also gives a good perspective for comparing Tikkanen s ideas with a long art-historical tradition. Tikkanen was profoundly interested in artistic creativity. In his own words, he wanted to study das künstlerische Können , artistic ability, instead of das künstlerische Wollen or artistic will, which was an important theoretical issue in art history in the late 19th century. This starting point led him to the history of style and iconographical research. Along with the Danish art historian, Julius Lange, he was one of the first scholars who began to study the meaning of gestures and postures in art. In my dissertation I have emphasized the importance of Tikkanen s personal art education. I regard it as having influenced both his scholarly argumentation and his working methods. I have also written a short overview of the situation of art history in Finland and in Northern Countries before Tikkanen s time in order to give an idea of his scientific background. My thesis is a critical and historiographical study on J. J. Tikkanen s role in the development of art history and its methodology.

The Art of Adaptation : A study on the Europeanization of Finland's foreign and security policy

This study examines how Finnish foreign and security policy has been influenced by the European Union and its Common Foreign and Security Policy. It points to a growing interplay and misfit between the external expectations originating from the European level and the domestic expectations and traditional ways-of-doing-things. It is concluded that the deepening European integration in the sphere of foreign, security and defence policy has played a significant role in a number of transformations in the Finnish policies since 1995. New, more European, meanings have been attached to the key concepts of Finnish foreign and security policy. Neutrality and traditional peacekeeping have been replaced by a minimalist reading of military non-alignment and participation in crisis management operations and EU battle groups. Traditional small state identity has been recast more and more as small member stateness . At the same time Finland has entered an era of post-consensus in national foreign and security policy. A key theoretical argument in the background of the study is that collective understandings attached to European policies, when not resonating well with domestic understandings, cause adaptation pressures on domestic-level processes and may lead to changes in the way interests and identities are constructed. This means that Europeanization is principally seen as identity reconstruction. Consequently, the theoretical framework of the study builds on the Europeanization research literature and constructivist IR theory on state identity. Foreign and security policy is defined as the practice in which state identity is reproduced, and the key foreign and security policy concepts are seen as the vehicles of identity production. It is concluded that for Finland, participation in the EU s foreign, security and defence policies represents not only a tool for responding to the changes in the international security environment but also a new means of self-identification. Concerning the Finnish attempts of projecting national interests on the European security policy agenda, it is concluded that they mainly relate to the compatibility of the potential development of EU s defence dimension with the Finnish military non-alignment. Although neutrality was cast aside in the official security policy when Finland joined the EU, the analysis shows that its impact has continued in the domestic political debate and in the mind-set of the decision-makers. The primary research material includes official Finnish foreign and security policy documentation and the related parliamentary debates from 1994 to 2007. This study serves also as a comprehensive empirical overview on Finland s reactions and contributions to the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy.

Moral Education in the Japanese Primary School Curricular Revision at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century: Aiming at a Rich and Beautiful Kokoro

This study examines values education in Japanese schools at the beginning of the millennium. The topic was approached by asking the following three questions concerning the curricular background, the morality conveyed through textbooks and the characterization of moral education from a comparative viewpoint: 1) What role did moral education play in the curriculum revision which was initiated in 1998 and implemented in 2002? 2) What kinds of moral responsibilities and moral autonomy do the moral texts develop? 3) What does Japanese moral education look like in terms of the comparative framework? The research was based on curriculum research. Its primary empirical data consisted of the national curriculum guidelines for primary school, which were taken into use in 2002, and moral texts, Kokoro no nôto, published by the Ministry of Education in the same context. Since moral education was approached in the education reform context, the secondary research material involved some key documents of the revision process from the mid-1990s to 2003. The research material was collected during three fieldwork periods in Japan (in 2002, 2003 and 2005). The text-analysis was conducted as a theory-dependent qualitative content analysis. Japanese moral education was analyzed as a product of its own cultural tradition and societal answer to the current educational challenges. In order to understand better its character, secular moral education was reflected upon from a comparative viewpoint. The theory chosen for the comparative framework, the value realistic theory of education, represented the European rational education tradition as well as the Christian tradition of values education. Moral education, which was the most important school subject at the beginning of modern school, was eliminated from the curriculum for political reasons in a school reform after the Second World War, but has gradually regained a stronger position since then. It was reinforced particularly at the turn of millennium, when a curriculum revision attempted to respond to educational and learning problems by emphasizing qualitative and value aspects. Although the number of moral lessons and their status as a non-official-subject remained unchanged, the Ministry of Education made efforts to improve moral education by new curricular emphases, new teaching material and additional in-service training possibilities for teachers. The content of the moral texts was summarized in terms of moral responsibility in four moral areas (intrapersonal, interpersonal, natural-supranatural and societal) as follows: 1) continuous self-development, 2) caring for others, 3) awe of life and forces beyond human power, and 4) societal contribution. There was a social-societal and emotional emphasis in what was taught. Moral autonomy, which was studied from the perspectives of rational, affective and individuality development, stressed independence in action through self-discipline and responsibility more than rational self-direction. Japanese moral education can be characterized as the education of kokoro (heart) and the development of character, which arises from virtue ethics. It aims to overcome egoistic individualism by reciprocal and interdependent moral responsibility based on responsible interconnectedness.

Narratives of Travel and the Travelling Concept of Narrative: Genre Blending and the Art of Transformation

In this article I shall argue that understandings of what constitutes narrative, how it functions, and the contexts in which it applies have broadened in line with cultural, social and intellectual trends which have seen a blurring, if not the dissolution, of boundaries between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’; ‘literary’ and ‘non-literary’ narrative spaces; history and story; concepts of time and space, text and image, teller and tale, representation and reality.To illustrate some of the ways in which the concept of narrative has travelled across disciplinary and generic boundaries, I shall look at The Art of Travel (de Botton 2003), with a view to demonstrating how the blending of genres works to produce a narrative that is at once personal and philosophical; visual and verbal; didactic and poetic. I shall show that such a text constitutes a site of interrogation of concepts of narrative, even as it depends on the reader’s ability to narrativize experience.

Esteettinen kokemus kulttuurisiltana : Soile Yli-Mäyryn taide kiinalaisen, japanilaisen ja suomalaisen yleisön kokemana

AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE AS A BRIDGE ACROSS CULTURES Soile Yli-Mäyry s art as experienced by Chinese, Japanese and Finnish audiences This study focuses on surveying and analysing experiences of Soile Yli-Mäyry s art in eleven different countries. Questionnaires were translated into nine different languages. In addition, interviews were conducted on the experiences of Chinese, Japanese and Finnish art audiences concerning a painting called Sun Wind . The study was mainly inspired by John Dewey s ideas of art as an interactive communication where the artist, the piece and those who experience it make up an interactive process. In this process experience is a meeting point with both individual and communal characteristics. The data was collected in conjunction with exhibitions in 1997−2005. The survey was carried out in eleven countries (Finland, United States, Brazil, China, Taiwan, Japan, India, Israel, Argentina, Germany and Switzerland). The survey data was made up of 2,563 returned questionnaires. The interviews in China, Japan and Finland were about the same painting Sun Wind , which was transported from Finland to Japan (Tokyo) and China. A total of 89 people were interviewed in Shanghai Art Museum, 30 people in Port-Ginza Gallery, Tokyo and 45 people in Soile Yli-Mäyry s Gallery in Finland. Three hypotheses that were turned into research questions directed the study: 1. Are there differences/ similarities between culturally different communities in the meanings attributed to experiences, e.g. according to emotional dimensions, or do experiences focus more on reflecting on one s own life or meanings attributed to the world around us? What kinds of experiential dimensions are there in different countries? Do similar, analogous experiences that transcend cultural barriers emerge in culturally different countries such as China, Japan and Finland? 2. Does the data display different types of experiencing subjects which are typical to a subject s own country or are they experiences that can be compared to those generated by an ideal landscape , where the art touches the subconscious and collective selfhood, being thus transnational and timeless? Closer analysis focuses on audience experiences in China, Japan and Finland (interviews, textual survey data). 3. Are the experiences and interpretations of experts similar/different to those of larger audiences? The survey data has been analysed with the help of cross-tabulation. After content analysis of the interviews and textual survey data, different ways of experiencing subjects were sketched by country (China, Japan, Finland). The types were both similar and dissimilar. The most important types were social/ecological (China), therapeutic/reserved (Japan) and narrative/projecting (Finland). There were differences in how experiences were emphasised: the Chinese public approached their experiences from the viewpoint of pragmatism and utility, where they could obtain new ideas for their own work or experiencing the exhibition gave courage to approach their own lives from a new perspective. In turn, the Japanese public experienced the art from a therapeutic angle and from a very reserved perspective, which Dylan Evans (2001, 13−17) has described as typical to Japanese culture. The experiences of the Finnish audience were strongly therapeutic and narrative. The people projected their emotions onto the piece and in a concrete manner forged them into a story. The partly similar results of this study in China, Japan and Finland demonstrate that the art displayed in the exhibitions contain images of the beginning or elements connected to the beginning of life, which touch the subconscious in the way an ideal landscape would. Experiencing the meaningfulness of one s own life through art is a common thread and a bridge across cultures that unites the experiences of the audiences of this study, be they Taoists, Confucians, Buddhists or Maoists in China, Shinto followers, Zen Buddhists in Japan or Evangelist-Lutherans in Finland. Keywords: experience, reception, bridge across cultures, types of experiencing subjects, experiential process, ideal landscape, elementality

Poetics of the Nameless Middle : Japan and the West in Philosophy and Music of the Twentieth Century

This study investigates the affinities between philosophy, aesthetics, and music of Japan and the West. The research is based on the structuralist notion (specifically, on that found in the narratology of Algirdas Julius Greimas), that the universal grammar functions as an abstract principle, underlying all kinds of discourse. The study thus aims to demonstrate how this grammar is manifested in philosophical, aesthetic, and musical texts and how the semiotic homogeneity of these texts can be explained on this basis. Totality and belongingness are the key philosophical concepts presented herein. As distinct from logocentrism manifested as substantializations of the world of ideas , god or mind, which was characteristic of previous Western paradigms, totality was defined as the coexistence of opposites. Thus Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Dōgen, and Nishida often illustrated it by identifying fundamental polarities, such as being and nothing, seer and seen, truth and illusion, etc. Accordingly, totality was schematically presented as an all-encompassing middle of the semiotic square. Similar values can be found in aesthetics and arts. Instead of dialectic syntagms, differentiated unity is considered as paradigmatic and the study demonstrates how this is manifested in traditional Japanese and Heideggerian aesthetics, as well as in the aspects of music of Claude Debussy and Tōru Takemitsu.