Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Fictions of Hybridity in the Anthropocene: Literature and Science in the Works of Rétif de la Bretonne(2021) Bezilla, Charlee Myranda; Benharrech, Sarah; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Experiments in genetic engineering have raised environmental, medical, and ethical questions concerning the manipulation of biological processes. Does modifying an organism in this way change its nature? What do increasingly complex relations between human and machine, organism and technology, mean for human identity and our relations with non-human lifeforms? These questions rest on uneasy but persistent dichotomies of nature and culture, of the humanities and the sciences, and on notions of modernity and progress central to ecocriticism and the environmental humanities. Conceptions of humans as distinct from nature—what anthropologist Philippe Descola names the “nature/culture” divide—are deeply imprinted in the Western psyche and reflected in disciplinary divisions separating the humanities and the sciences, what Bruno Latour calls the “Internal Great Divide.”These questions about hybrid beings, manipulating nature, and the nature/culture divide were particularly pertinent in eighteenth-century French literature and natural history, a period coinciding with the nascence of biological science wherein many thinkers locate the beginnings of the “Anthropocene,” an epoch in which human activity has markedly affected earth systems. Drawing on methods from literary studies and ecocriticism, I examine how literary texts engage debates on the mutability of species, the nature of man, and anxieties about governing populations that remain relevant today. Through the lens of Nicolas-Edme Rétif de la Bretonne’s 1781 novel La Découverte australe par un homme-volant, I engage close readings of the novel alongside natural historical texts to consider the possibilities of “hybridity” as a tool for understanding literary production, the relationships between humans and nonhumans, and how the domains of fiction and science can come together. I find that these texts posit hybridity as a promising intervention, despite growing concerns about degeneration stemming from crossbreeding experiments. After analyzing the formal aspects of the “hybrid” text and its paratexts in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2, I examine how the novel incorporates, interrogates, and extends contemporary theories about the nature of humans and animals. Chapter 3 explores the manipulation of hybrid creatures and proto-eugenicist politics in La Découverte australe alongside key texts from the period to trace how the novel engages contemporary discourses of perfectibility and degeneration. Chapter 4 shows how the novel promotes mechanical technology, along with biological hybridization, as tools of imperialism and societal improvement at a pivotal moment leading up to the industrial revolution.Item The Price of Reconciliation: West Germany, France and the Arc of Postwar Justice for the Crimes of Nazi Germany, 1944-1963(2020) Staedtler, Rene; Herf, Jeffrey C; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation links the arc of war crimes justice with the arc of reconciliation in Franco-German relations from 1944 to 1963. I argue that France initially created a retributive justice which aggressively targeted crimes committed by the German occupant from 1940 to 1944. By examining the internal debates within the French government and parliament regarding the legal foundation of Nazi war crimes trials in France, I show that the French polity dispensed with and even violated the French republican tradition in its effort to reckon with the Nazi past. In the second part, I demonstrate that the process of European integration and Franco-German reconciliation offered those in West Germany who resented the retributive justice in France the opportunity to influence, even manipulate the French government by initiating and sustaining a trajectory which bound reconciliation ever more tightly to the retreat from the goals of postwar justice. I contend that once French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman initiated the path towards reconciliation with Adenauer’s West Germany, a broad coalition centrally coordinated from Bonn utilized the desire for rapprochement to undermine French war crimes justice. By attacking French justice as a sign of its unforgiveness and its resolve to continue with the so-called “arch-enmity,” the West German diplomats and government officials argued that the war crimes trials were regarded as a symbol of a period of humiliation and injustice which needed to be eradicated in order to achieve a “veritable reconciliation.” I show how the reconciliation narrative shaped the transition from a French system of justice which was one of the most extensive and consequential ones in Western Europe in the late 1940s to the complete and premature release of all remaining war criminals in French custody. The West German view prevailed and imprinted on the landmark achievement of Franco-German reconciliation the stain of privileging the perpetrators over the victims of Nazi Germany in France.Item IN SEARCH OF THE CITY: POWER, IDENTITY, AND NARRATIVES OF URBANIZATION FROM STENDHAL TO ZOLA(2018) Wegmann, Hannah; Brami, Joseph; Modern French Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies urbanization in nineteenth-century French novels, exploring the ways that this demographic phenomenon structures plot, describes inner transformations, and most importantly becomes a catalyst for confronting and challenging established power structures. Characters who transition from rural to urban states, either geographic and actual, or interior and moral, force confrontations between a whole series of power constructs embodied by the country and city. Their evolution, mapped in conjunction with demographic studies and the writings of urban theorists, allows us to explore questions of authority, reality, language, and gender in nineteenth-century France. An analysis of the concrete urbanization of Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir is followed by a study of the abstract urbanization of Emma in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, who refashions her identity and morals in line with urban ideals. Chapter three employs Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames to study the urbanization reshaping the economic power structures of Paris. Chapter four uses Zola's L'Assommoir to question the nineteenth-century idealism behind many urban reforms. Using works by Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, Pierre Loti, George Sand, Claire de Duras, and numerous visual artists, the final chapter explores the relationship between urbanization and Orientalism by transposing the rural-urban binary onto the relationship between Occident and Orient. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that actual rural and urban geographies become cartographies of power wherein the country and city communicate an entire set of forces competing for agency. Each narrative of urbanization exhibits different manifestations of the city and the country and different types of evolution between the two. Yet each narrative reveals a fundamental transformation precipitated by the clashing of rural and urban ideas, powers, and identities. This transformation shapes and defines nineteenth-century France.Item BRILLER SUR SCÈNE : L'ASTRONOMIE DANS LE THÉÂTRE DU GRAND SIÈCLE(2014) Arnaud, Cybele; Campangne, Hervé Thomas; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)January 5th, 1634, the news of Galileo's condemnation by the Roman Catholic Church for his heretical belief in heliocentric theories -theories that postulate that the Earth orbits the Sun- reach France. As the professors of the Sorbonne condemn Galileo, as René Descartes, ever-cautious, chooses to forgo publishing his Treatise on the World, an ever increasing number of French writers turn to fiction to prove, attack, or simply present astronomical and cosmological theories to their audience. While much has been written about the new astronomy's relationship to poetry, proto-science fiction and vulgarization through novelization of scientific knowledge, its presence on the French stage, in comedies and ballets, has been mostly ignored by the scholarship. This thesis constructs a timeline of "natural philosophy theatre", tracking the movement of the sun and the earth and the representation of the theories elaborated by Copernicus, Tycho Brahé and Descartes through plays and ballets published in the 17th century and beyond, in order to analyze the function of laughter in the context of the scientific revolution. The following questions will be answered: How is the new astronomy presented on stage, both in comedies and ballets? What role does laughter play in the representation of science? Is it simply used to challenge the audience's beliefs? Is dance's only purpose to mimic the orbits of the planets, or does it hold a deeper meaning? What, if any, is the greater purpose of including scientific knowledge in theater?Item FEMINISM À LA QUEBEC: IDEOLOGICAL TRAVELINGS OF AMERICAN AND FRENCH THOUGHT (1960-2010)(2012) Page, Genevieve; Moses, Claire; Women's Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the travelings of three concepts central to feminism - gender, queer, and intersectionality - as they move between the United States, France, and Quebec. The concept of gender, central to U.S. feminism, is relatively absent from feminist theory in France and Quebec until the 1990s; rather, drawing on Marxist and existentialist traditions, French and Quebec feminists will deploy the term "rapports sociaux de sexe" to identify that differences among women and men are grounded in social structure and, further, that the two classes, women and men, are constituted in hierarchicized relation. The term queer, linguistically subversive in English but lacking this potential when translated into French, is mainly resisted by French materialist feminists and feminist scholars in Quebec on the basis that it displaces social reality focusing instead on resistance through performance. Nonetheless, in Quebec, activists groups such as Les panthères rose are able to present a version of queer that also addresses systemic oppressions. Finally, the concept of intersectionality, theorized first by feminists of color in the U.S. trying to reconcile their allegiances to multiple struggles, provides a useful tool for analyzing the interaction between different systems of oppression and how they shape the lives of people differently located. In France, a similar desire to theorize multiple oppressions led to the development of the concept of "consubstantialité des rapports sociaux," whereby social "rapports" of sex and of socio-economic class are co-constituted. Yet, in the context of changing immigration patterns and a debate on the headscarf, French feminists re-examine the concept of intersectionality to enhance their understanding of racialization and its interaction with gendered structures. In Quebec, a look at three different moments reveals an early theorization of the interaction of multiple oppressions by capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism with feminists, drawing on their experiences as separatist movement participants, self-identifying as "racialized" based on the model of Third World national liberation struggle. In the 1990s and again in 2007, however, feminists will struggle to develop new models of pluralism that address the marginalization, within society in general and also within feminism, of women from minority ethnocultural or religious groups.Item From Colonies to Client-States: The Origins of France's Postcolonial Relationship with Sub-Saharan Africa, 1940-1969(2011) Schmitt, Paul Daniel; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the transformation of French mentalities regarding France's role in Africa, beginning with World War II and continuing through the end of Charles de Gaulle's presidency in 1969. Despite the political independence of France's African colonies in 1960, many of them quickly transitioned from colonies into client-states. Since then, France's relationships with its former colonies have enabled a variety of underhanded dealings on the continent. In tracing the roots of this transformation, I focus on French politicians and colonial administrators, and their gradual ideological shift away from traditional conceptions of the French colonial mission. I argue that the events of World War II, which split the empire and placed France in a greatly disadvantageous international position (first with respect to Nazi Germany and later vis-à-vis the Allies), led to a formidable shift in how France viewed its colonies and other Francophone territories in sub-Saharan Africa. French insecurity, precipitated by its fall as a major world power, required new ways to maintain influence internationally and in its empire. This mentality, while shaped by the postwar environment, was not the product of any one political ideology; it was shared by colonial administrators in both the Vichy and Free French regimes, and by politicians on both the left and right of the political spectrum after the war. At the same time, French officials grew increasingly wary of British and American efforts to broaden their respective standings in Africa. This renewed concern about the "Anglo-Saxon" threat, along with the increasing need to preserve influence in Africa in a postcolonial age, were powerful undercurrents in the formation of French policy on the continent leading up to and after decolonization. The result was increasingly cynical support of despotic regimes friendly to French interests, in an effort to maintain political influence in Africa after decolonization.Item Claiming India: French scholars and the preoccupation with India during the nineteenth century(2009) Mohan, Jyoti; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines the image of India which was created by French academics during the nineteenth century. This image of India was distinct from the British image of India as a land of oppressed masses ruled by Oriental despots. The French image of India relied on spiritual and religious aspects of India, with particular emphasis on the antiquity and Aryan heritage of Indian culture. the difference in these images was largely due to the different intellectual and political traditions of Britain and France, but also reflected Anglo-French national and colonial rivalry as well as France's subordinate (subaltern) colonial position in India. I have looked at French writings on India from the religious writings of early modern missionaries to the secular writing of early twentieth century French academics. I have also examined the interest that French scholars in diverse intellectual fields like philology, anthropology, history and religion had in learning and writing about India during the nineteenth century. My conclusion is that French scholars at the end of the nineteenth century defined India primarily in terms of race, caste and Hinduism.Item IGNACIO ZULOAGA AND THE PROBLEM OF SPAIN(2009) Crosson, Dena; Hargrove, June; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: IGNACIO ZULOAGA AND THE PROBLEM OF SPAIN Dena Crosson, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Dissertation directed by: Professor June Hargrove Department of Art History and Archeology This dissertation examines the career of Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945), a highly successful and influential artist during his lifetime, in the context of nationalism and the political and cultural conditions that informed his artistic persona. Positioning himself to both Spanish and foreign audiences as the "painter of Spain," his style and subject matter simultaneously exploited foreign preconceptions about Spain while serving as a lightning rod for the critical nationalist discourse preoccupying Spanish political and cultural leaders during the first decades of the twentieth century. In the 1910s and 1920s the vernacular nationalism he practiced was not opposed to modernism. But by the 1930s, nationalism had become associated with rising fascist movements both in Europe and in Spain. Through a series of case studies this dissertation problematizes the issue of modernism in art and fills an important gap in the study of the critical role of nationalism for the struggle between tradition and modernity in the arts in early twentieth-century Spain. Chapter One examines Zuloaga's influence in France through his affiliation with a group of French artists known as La Bande Noire and describes his important contribution to the rediscovery of El Greco in the last years of the nineteenth century. Chapter Two explores Zuloaga's discovery of the province of Castilla in 1898 as a subject for his work. It charts the significance of Castilla for the nationalist project of the Generation of 98 as well as for the regenerationist Institución Libre de Enseñanza (Free Institute of Learning). Chapter Three maps the growing links between Zuloaga and traditionalist and fascist ideologies, both in France and in Spain, in the 1910s and 1920s. Chapter Four investigates Zuloaga's career both in the context of the foundation and fall of Spain's Second Republic (1931-1939) and the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. Zuloaga's career provides a significant case study for the gradual alignment, of what became traditionalism, with right-wing political ideology, an alignment by no means necessarily apparent before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936.Item Myth and the Maternal Voice: Mediation in the Poetry of Vénus Khoury-Ghata(2009) Braswell, Margaret Anne; Brami, Joseph; Modern French Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Born under the French Mandate in Lebanon, Paris-based Francophone poet and novelist Vénus Khoury-Ghata represents a generation of Lebanese writers who have witnessed Lebanon's evolution from a newly independent state to a twenty-first century nation struggling to survive the devastation of civil war and regional conflict. Like many of her compatriots who have chosen exile and whose mother tongue is Arabic, Khoury-Ghata's negotiation between two languages and cultures nurtures an oeuvre that reflects the tensions and provocations of a dual Franco-Lebanese identity. An examination of her poetry represents an opportunity to direct more attention to a poet whose passionate representation of her native country and the pathos of the human figure memorializes in verse personal and collective tragedy. Khoury-Ghata's narrative-driven poems reveal the dynamics of accommodating differences by promoting encounter and integration, while recognizing that confrontation is not entirely unavoidable. Seeking to reconcile the distance and the passage of time that separate the poet from her origins, as well as linguistic and cultural differences that divide self and society, her approach evokes the contemporary poet's quest for a rapprochement, however ephemeral, with the Other, often in the context of an autobiographical project that merges History and myth. Her consistent evocation in writing and interviews of her dual identity invites an examination of her verse in the framework of theoretical notions based on binary structures. Informed by surrealist and magical realist strategies, as well as French and Arab poetic legacies, Khoury-Ghata's verse expresses a paradigm of inversion that renders the common narrative fantastic, transforms the ordinary housewife into a supernatural heroine, and sanctifies the abject. Evocations of language and myth affiliated with this subversive dynamic encourage the investigation of their significance in the framework of binary structures that privilege the negative and the nocturnal. Julia Kristeva's theory of poetic language provides one method for the analysis of Khoury-Ghata's portrayal of the maternal figure and maternal language as negative and subversive feminine forces. This study will underscore how the poet's integration into her text of signifiers of Arabic, orality, and pre-verbal impulses, weaves the maternal voice and gestures into a mythical narrative. In addition, French myth critics such as Gilbert Durand and Pierre Brunel propose various reflections on the development of mythical structures, archetypes, and themes, whose evocations in Khoury-Ghata's verse underscore a poetic strategy of the recovery and revival of her Lebanese origins linked to a broader Mediterranean culture. Durand's isotopic classification of images according to a dichotomous paradigm of the diurnal and nocturnal throws into relief the archetype of the nocturnal Grande déesse whose enigmatic (re)productive power suggests correspondences with the maternal dynamic in Kristeva's semiotic theory, as well as the surrealist médiatrice, and Wendy Faris' conception of the mystical feminine in magical realist strategies. The theme of mediation persists in the poet's mythico-poetic approach that promotes the contact and fusion of contrary forces in diverse "narratives in verse" representing cosmogonic myth, the myth of the primitive Other, biomythography, folktale and fable, and the interaction of myth and memoir. This inquiry demonstrates the durability and plasticity of binary structures of myth and language that mediate personal and collective identities challenged by the potential polarization of languages, cultures, and genders.Item French Stewardship of Jazz: The Case of France Musique and France Culture(2008-03-24) Suddarth, Roscoe Seldon; King, Richard G.; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The French treat jazz as "high art," as their state radio stations France Musique and France Culture demonstrate. Jazz came to France in World War I with the US army, and became fashionable in the 1920s--treated as exotic African-American folklore. However, when France developed its own jazz players, notably Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli, jazz became accepted as a universal art. Two well-born Frenchmen, Hugues Panassié and Charles Delaunay, embraced jazz and propagated it through the Hot Club de France. After World War II, several highly educated commentators insured that jazz was taken seriously. French radio jazz gradually acquired the support of the French government. This thesis describes the major jazz programs of France Musique and France Culture, particularly the daily programs of Alain Gerber and Arnaud Merlin, and demonstrates how these programs display connoisseurship, erudition, thoroughness, critical insight, and dedication. France takes its "stewardship" of jazz seriously.