Women and the Moral Politics of Dress in Twentieth Century Tehran

This research examines the politicization of women’s clothing under the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republican of Iran from the 1930s-1990s. I distinctively focus on the governments’ use of women’s clothing to define their idea of Iranian nationalism and how their sumptuary policies affected women’s lives. I assess the motives behind the sumptuary laws for each regime, and argue that both governments situated women as symbols of national health and honor, and used them as visualizations for the success of their platforms. Despite different interpretations of morality, my research suggests that both governments created these laws to “purify” their “corrupt” nation, using the same rhetoric. Paradoxically, this led to a sexualized culture that exists today in Tehran. I analyze a wealth of primary sources including women’s magazines, political cartoons, poetry, newspapers, extant clothing, photographs, legislation, autobiographies, speeches, passports, Revolutionary-era books written by Iranian intellectuals, and oral interviews that I conducted.

Buried voices: Genres and types of female authorship during the Spanish American colonial period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries)

This dissertation analyzes various types of non-canonical texts authorized by women from a wide spectrum of classes and races in the Spanish colonies. The female voice, generally absent from official colonial documents of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteen centuries, left a gap in the complex subject of women's history and social participation. Through the study of personal letters, autobiographies, journals, court documents, inquisitorial transcripts, wills and testaments, edicts, orders, proclamations and posters, that voice is recovered. Thus, the Indigenous, Spaniards and African women and their descendants who lived during this period left their written legacy and proof of participation. Beginning with a thorough history of the native woman's interest in writing, this study focuses on how women of all social levels utilized the few means of writing available at their disposal to display a testimonial, critical and sometimes fictional narrative of their surroundings. ^ This investigation concludes that it is necessary to change the traditional image of the passive women of the colonies, subjected to a patriarchal authority and unable to speak or grow on their own. The documents under study, introduced women who were able to self represent themselves as followers of the tradition while at the same time their writings were denying that very same statement. They passed from the private arena to the public one with discourses that confessed their innermost feelings and concerns, challenged the authority of the Inquisitor or the Governor, exposed their sexual freedom and transvestite narratives, successfully developed stratagems that challenged the official ideology of the oppressive religious environment and established their own authority reaching at last the freedom of their souls. ^

Frederick Douglass and Ireland, 1845: The "Vertiginous Twist[s]" of an Irish Encounter

Frederick Douglas was a reader of and writer on the nineteenth-century political and social texts and contexts of oppression, which he experienced at home and witnesed while in Ireland and Britain, 1845-47. This thesis is unique in its identification of several surprising lacunae in the research and critical evaluation of Frederick Douglass’ activities of reading and writing and the texts and contexts that supported these activities. This thesis takes Douglass’ relationship with Ireland and the Irish as its starting point, and offers several moments in the transnational space engendered by Douglass’ readerly and writerly experience of the transatlantic axes of Ireland, Britain and America. This thesis draws upon archival research to recover information regarding Douglass’ trip and subjects his reading and writing on Ireland and the Irish to the critical rigours of narratolgical, cultural and discourse analysis. One lacuna is Douglass’ favourite and neglected school primer, the Columbian Orator, which Douglass signified upon across his autobiographical project. The speech by the Irish patriot and exile, Arthur O’Connor, included in the Orator, is crucial to Douglass’ understanding and expression of justice and equality. Genette’s narratological analysis gives theoretical traction to the ways in which, in his autobiographical representations of his British trip, Douglass recalibrates his autobiographies to reflect his changing perspectives on his life and work. Contrary to popular assumptions, Douglass did, in two letters to Garrison address and comment on Irish poverty. This thesis interrogates the strategic anglophilia of these letters. While the World’s Temperance Convention (WTC) refused to discuss African- American slavery, analysis of Douglass’ speech in Covent Garden and of the paratextual apparatus of the published proceedings of the WTC demonstrates the impossibility of separating these closely interrelated reform causes. When a newly discovered poem from Waterford that admonished the city for its disregard for Douglass’ message is juxtaposed with an uncomfortable moment in Cork, we understand that Douglass became a pawn to bolster sectarian rivalries between nationalist and establishment factions. Though Douglass believed imperial politics was the best vehicle for modernity, he recognised that it had failed Ireland: consequently, in Thoughts and Recollections of a Trip to Ireland (1886), he advocates for Home Rule for Ireland.

Formación de cuadros y frentes populares : Relaciones de clase y género en el Partido Comunista de Argentina, 1935-1951

Este artículo se enfoca en el estudio del período que corre entre 1935 y 1951 para destacar una de las empresas más importantes del PC a nivel mundial, con substanciales réditos en Argentina: la organización de las mujeres. En particular, nuestro interrogante es de qué modo un partido tradicionalmente considerado de estructuración directa y unitaria, profesional, eminentemente concentrado en la línea de formación ideológica por sobre la electoral, caracterizado por un perfil obrero y fuerte en términos de organización administrativa interna -particularmente, debido a su característica celular-, encuentra límites a esa propia caracterización organizacional en tanto delinea una política de intervención coyuntural que lo coloca en alianzas con otros actores y modifica, con ello, sus propios caracteres. El corpus documental de esta investigación incluye documentos y prensa partidaria (comunista y de otras agrupaciones políticas o sociales); archivos personales, autobiografías y entrevistas. La codificación permitió un ordenamiento de los datos extraídos de los documentos relevados, agrupándolos, según similitudes o diferencias relevantes en categorías que hicieron posible su análisis

Formación de cuadros y frentes populares : Relaciones de clase y género en el Partido Comunista de Argentina, 1935-1951

Este artículo se enfoca en el estudio del período que corre entre 1935 y 1951 para destacar una de las empresas más importantes del PC a nivel mundial, con substanciales réditos en Argentina: la organización de las mujeres. En particular, nuestro interrogante es de qué modo un partido tradicionalmente considerado de estructuración directa y unitaria, profesional, eminentemente concentrado en la línea de formación ideológica por sobre la electoral, caracterizado por un perfil obrero y fuerte en términos de organización administrativa interna -particularmente, debido a su característica celular-, encuentra límites a esa propia caracterización organizacional en tanto delinea una política de intervención coyuntural que lo coloca en alianzas con otros actores y modifica, con ello, sus propios caracteres. El corpus documental de esta investigación incluye documentos y prensa partidaria (comunista y de otras agrupaciones políticas o sociales); archivos personales, autobiografías y entrevistas. La codificación permitió un ordenamiento de los datos extraídos de los documentos relevados, agrupándolos, según similitudes o diferencias relevantes en categorías que hicieron posible su análisis

Formación de cuadros y frentes populares : Relaciones de clase y género en el Partido Comunista de Argentina, 1935-1951

Este artículo se enfoca en el estudio del período que corre entre 1935 y 1951 para destacar una de las empresas más importantes del PC a nivel mundial, con substanciales réditos en Argentina: la organización de las mujeres. En particular, nuestro interrogante es de qué modo un partido tradicionalmente considerado de estructuración directa y unitaria, profesional, eminentemente concentrado en la línea de formación ideológica por sobre la electoral, caracterizado por un perfil obrero y fuerte en términos de organización administrativa interna -particularmente, debido a su característica celular-, encuentra límites a esa propia caracterización organizacional en tanto delinea una política de intervención coyuntural que lo coloca en alianzas con otros actores y modifica, con ello, sus propios caracteres. El corpus documental de esta investigación incluye documentos y prensa partidaria (comunista y de otras agrupaciones políticas o sociales); archivos personales, autobiografías y entrevistas. La codificación permitió un ordenamiento de los datos extraídos de los documentos relevados, agrupándolos, según similitudes o diferencias relevantes en categorías que hicieron posible su análisis

The magical transformation contest in the ancient storytelling tradition

El concurso de transformación mágica, esquema narrativo difundido en la tradición popular, se presenta en dos variantes principales: los hechiceros que compiten pueden metamorfosearse en varios seres o crear esos seres por medios mágicos. En cualquier caso el concursante ganador da a luz criaturas más fuertes que superan las de su oponente. La segunda variante fue preferida en el antiguo Cercano Oriente (Sumeria, Egipto, Israel). La primera se puede encontrar en algunos mitos griegos sobre cambiadores de forma (por ejemplo, Zeus y Némesis). El mismo esquema narrativo puede haber influido en un episodio de la Novela de Alejandro (1.36-38), en el que Darío envía regalos simbólicos a Alejandro y los dos monarcas enemigos ofrecen contrastantes explicaciones de ellos. Esta historia griega racionaliza el concurso de cuento de hadas, transfiriendo las fantásticas hazañas de creaciones milagrosas a un plano secundario pero realista de metáfora lingüística.

Kärlek, till ett annorlunda barn : En litteraturstudie av bemötande och attityder gentemot familjer med diagnosbärande barn.

The issue of diagnosed children has been heavily debated in the media over the past decade. This study deals with the issue of diagnosis from a family perspective and utilizes a method of thematic analysis trough a literature review of four autobiographies that describes the parents experience of the diagnosis issue regarding attitudes and responses towards their children and family. The purpose is to create a greater understanding of the family situation and to explore new approaches and strategies to counter psychological affliction and exclusion in society. The results show a widespread exclusion based on the main themes, internal and external influences. These themes represent exclusion factors like for example inexperience in dealing with power bearing institutions such as schools and health facilities and creates few opportunities for socialization processes due to the child's disability, stigma. Both of these themes can be seen as a result of sensory deprivation. The attitudes and responses of society towards the stigma bearing child has a great negative impact on the families with diagnosed children.

The Janus-faced City: A Sensory History of the London Blitz 1940–1941

The city of London was, during the years of 1940–1941, a city under fire. The metropolis seemed to have two faces, like the Roman deity Janus: the face of the daylight hours, so normal, and yet so deceiving in its false quietness – and at nightfall, the city turned, and the face of it was the face of the devil himself, transforming London into a living inferno. This thesis examines the sensescapes of the Blitz, through the diaries and memoirs written of that time. The primary sources consist of seven different diaries, two autobiographies, and four research volumes that contain multiple diary- and memoire entries, mostly from the Mass Observation Archives and from the Imperial War Museum. The sensory approach is a new orientation in the field of history – it studies the five senses in their cultural contexts, interpreting the often subtle ways in which the senses affect into society, politics, culture, and class hierarchies, to name only but few. The subject of the sensory history of war is a theme widely unexamined: this thesis contributes to this frontier field by unveiling the sensorium of the London bombings, comparing the differences between the halves of nychtemeron, and examining how the Blitz was communicated by the writers as a lived, bodily experience. This study reveals the very different sensory worlds in which the Londoners lived, during a time that is often described with the mythical solidarity that was thought to exist between the people. The reality of the homeless, working class, and poor were in the foul smelling tubes, poor law -dated rations, and in the smoking ruins of East End – the contrast was massive reflecting it to the luxury hotels and restaurants of the upper classes, opportunities for evacuation, sheltering possibilities, and overall comforts of life.

Pytanie o pamięć. Relacje autobiograficzne więźniów obozów koncentracyjnych

This book consists of two main parts. The first part offers a basic methodological introduction, presenting a concise but multifaceted overview of current problems of collective memory. The second part contains a set of interviews with former prisoners of concentration camps carried out by the authors. The research was conducted by Paweł Greń and Łukasz Posłuszny and focuses on issues of collective and cultural memory illustrated by individual life experiences of concentration camps prisoners. The field of oral history serves as the framework of analysis and narrative inquiry as its research tool. Interviews and additional research materials were collected by the authors and are not available in previous publications, making this work a precious supplement to the current scholarly body of knowledge and achievements in the discipline of memory studies. According to the authors, current historical and literary publications provide an incomplete picture of the WWII and its aftermaths for survivors, because descriptions of the war and imprisonment in the camp play still a dominate role in narratives. The importance of these issues in autobiographies is unquestionable and highly needed to create a common identity among generation of prisoners, though authors often wanted to perceive the fate of individuals in a broader perspective – including the periods before and after the war. Hence, interviews stressed personal experiences and their understanding over time by former prisoners. The interviews covered many topics on life before, during and after the camp – among them daily and neutral routines, but also difficult matters. The latter were connected on the one hand with traumatic events or harsh memories and emotions, and on the other hand with less extensively highlighted threads of prisoners’ lives - such as issues of the body and sexuality – and their dependence on particular representation or narrative. The authors are convinced that the book serves not only as a record of past remembered by eyewitnesses, but it also depicts their accounts in wider contexts and discourses, which expose specific dimensions of told and written stories. In the book Questions for Memory one examine the approach proposed by young scholars. Interviews were conducted from 2009-2011, seventy years after the end of the second world war, and this initiative was the result of questions and doubts of the authors from the existing literature. They also wanted to use the unique opportunity to meet with eyewitnesses and record their stories, because when they pass away we will irretrievably lose the possibility to listen to them and to pose sensitive questions. The majority of the interviewees were prisoners of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau, and their experiences differed greatly from each other based on social background and specific experience in the camps as well as their post-camp and postwar life. Aside from persons whose stories are already well known and open, readers will hear the stories of those who spoke only reluctantly and very rarely, or who had remained silent until the present author’s research. Qualitative differences between interviews occurred on the level of established relationship and atmosphere of trust, which varied according to circumstances and individual character and personality. For P. Greń and Ł. Posłuszny, each interviewed person is equally and highly valued due to the collected material and the personal experience of the meetings. Among the ten interviews placed in the book, seven of them are the stories told by women. Their testimonies exemplify realities of everyday prisoners’ existence and gravitate towards mirroring specifically feminine perspectives of imprisonment. For women, crucial problems stemmed from experiences of body that intertwine with suffering, feeling of shame and humiliation. Early discussions on holocaust literature and issues of representation that shaped the Polish narrative and collective memory imposed imperatives of silence on certain topics. A solution for reconciling heroic and inhuman deeds in stories with completely human physiology was impossible and improper for many years. There were also questions about life after, ways of dealing with a trauma or reflections on the present time. During conversations the authors attempted to come closer to something distant and incomprehensible for their generation and for people who did not experience the camps. Despite the fact that there have been seventy years of dealing with these events in literature, art, drama, film, memoirs and scientific works, the past still breeds more questions than answers. The book Questions for Memory serves as an example of this phenomenon.

Täterstrategien und Opferkognitionen bei sexuellem Missbrauch. Eine pädagogische Lektüre gegenwartsliterarischer Texte

Der Artikel untersucht anhand dreier exemplarisch ausgewählter Romane, inwieweit die Erzählerfunktionen zur Entlarvung und Verrätselung von Täterstrategien angesichts des Vorwurfs sexuellen Missbrauchs oder zu deren verzerrter Wahrnehmung beitragen. Er zeigt diejenigen ästhetischen Signaturen auf, die verschiedene Fokalisierungen der Reflexionen des Täterhandelns ermöglichen und knüpft an pädagogische Traditionen der Reflexionen literarischer Texte an, die klassische pädagogische Denkweisen provoziert, indem sie diese mit einem strukturalistischen Ansatz kontrastiert und sich darum bemüht, präskriptive pädagogische Ansätze zur Rekonstruktion von und Intervention in Täterstrategien um neue Fragestellungen und Erkenntnisinteresse zu bereichern. Das Interesse der Pädagogik an der gelingenden Prävention wird mit literarischen Modellen des negativen Gelingens der angewandten Täterstrategien konfrontiert. Mit Norbert Niemanns Roman „Schule der Gewalt“, Jakob Arjounis Roman „Hausaufgaben“ und Margaux Fragosos autobiographischem Roman „Tiger, Tiger“ werden drei Texte analysiert, die ein Täterhandeln und dessen Reflexion nicht nur unterschiedlichen perspektivieren und fokalisieren, sondern auch mit der ästhetischen Tradition eines am Genuss und der Raffinesse des gelingenden Missbrauchs brechenden Anleitungs-Diskurses in literarischen Texten brechen. Eine besondere Eigenschaft aller drei Texte ist zudem in der Parallelisierung schulischer und privater Missbrauchserfahrungen und der zugehörigen sozialen Räume zu sehen. (Orig.)

Forma e critica del reale in Siegfried Kracauer (1925-1937): Immagine, citta, modernita

Siegfried Kracauer (1889-1966) fu di formazione ingegnere-architetto, giornalista. Egli fu un instancabile osservatore critico della superficie della realtà, convinto quale era che solo dall’osservazione dei fenomeni superficiali si potesse davvero intuire la realtà di un’epoca. L’obiettivo della tesi è cercare di cogliere il rapporto tra forma e critica della realtà attraverso saggi, articoli di giornale, recensioni di libri e film, biografie e autobiografie. All’interno di questo lavoro si sono isolate alcune immagini e opere che permettono, a nostro parere, di cogliere il senso della decifrazione della modernità in Kracauer. La luce come figura ambigua della fantasmagoria e della metropoli, il mito e la razionalizzazione capitalistica, la figura di Ginster, personaggio letterario chiaramente autobiografico incaricato di descrivere le tensioni nel passaggio dall’esperienza della prima guerra mondale al mondo moderno dell’improvvisazione e della perdita dei confini e, infine, Jacques Offenbach e l’operetta, incursione storica di Kracauer alla ricerca di una biografia sociale della città di Parigi come archeologia della modernità sviluppando un parallelo tra l’epoca del Secondo Impero di Napoleone III e l’avvento del nazismo. A ognuno di questi momenti è dedicato un capitolo che cerca di sviluppare continuità e discontinuità del pensiero di Kracauer nei confronti delle eredità filosofiche e metodologiche di György Lukács, Georg Simmel, Karl Marx. mL’attenzione è stata rivolta alle testimonianze dei rapporti e dei confronti, talora aspri, con i suoi colleghi e amici a partire da quelli complicati con Benjamin e Adorno che restituiscono un’immagine di un pensatore originale e complesso alla ricerca e, paradossalmente sulla soglia, di una via per pensare l’irruzione della cultura di massa e del potere assoggettante delle immagini.