Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e a súas Aplicaciónshttp://hdl.handle.net/10347/115272024-03-29T00:39:11Z2024-03-29T00:39:11ZPosthumanism in the Fashion industry: on human animals and cyborgsEgea Castañeda, Samuelhttp://hdl.handle.net/10347/303032023-03-14T03:03:19Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZPosthumanism in the Fashion industry: on human animals and cyborgs
Egea Castañeda, Samuel
Since the second half of the twentieth century, disciplines as varied as cultural studies, anthropology, sociology psychology or gender studies have considered fashion as worthy of academic pursuit. Particularly important for the purpose of the present study are those perspectives which, grounded on a sociological approach to fashion and dress, examine the tripartite interconnectedness between dress, body and identity (Entwistle 2000). This study does not simply focus on dress as an individual practice; it also addresses the critical and creative discourses presentedby fashion designers in their runway shows, which are widely spread through social media in a cyber-mediated reality. In fact, as this study contends, inasmuch as it represents a system defined by incessant renewal, fashion is now echoing current ontological debates that call into question the barrier between the human and the nonhuman, and contemporary fashion designers are engaging creatively in the (re)creation of bodies that subvert dominant figurations of the human body. Among the designers that have challenged said barrier, Alexander McQueen (1969–2010) stands out for arousing raging controversies, which led the press to recognize him as the enfant terrible of the fashion industry. The present dissertation seeks to analyze the posthuman turn registered in Alexander McQueen’s fashion shows, where dominant figurations of the human body were often challenged through creations that hybridized, in an explicit and controversial manner, the human body with parts of nonhuman animals as well as with technological artefacts. InThis study intends to shed light on two different tropes crucial throughout McQueen’s career, and which destabilize the above-mentioned binary opposites: first, the feral woman archetype, which challenges the barrier between human animals and nonhuman animals; and second, the (re)creation of the cyborg, which defies the divide between human and machine.
The study is divided into two main sections, with the first one aiming at laying bare the methodological apparatus on which the study is grounded –namely, posthumanism and fashion theory– and the second one being devoted to analyzing a selection of McQueen’s fashion shows.
Traballo Fin de Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións. Curso 2021-2022
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZChanging Skins and Blurring Borders: Woman-Animal Metamorphosis and the Posthuman in Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox”Macías Alonso, Larahttp://hdl.handle.net/10347/278712022-04-02T02:02:32Z2021-01-01T00:00:00ZChanging Skins and Blurring Borders: Woman-Animal Metamorphosis and the Posthuman in Sarah Hall’s “Mrs Fox”
Macías Alonso, Lara
In current times, as defined by the connecting waves of technologically mediated globalisation and the intensification of threats to ecological and social stability, human impact on the other inhabitants on Earth and on the planet itself is not only undeniable, but also irremediable and significantly damaging. Hence, it is of utmost urgency to engage in sustainable practices that meet the social and environmental needs of the contemporary world ― an endeavour which requires the radical decentring and redefinition of the human subject in ethically accountable ways. In a critical and theoretical effort to deconstruct obsolete, unproductive conceptions of subjectivity, thinkers in the fields of Posthumanism and Animal Studies have resorted to the exploration of human-animal interactions as a fundamental gesture towards the invalidation of hegemonic ontological categories and the eventual consolidation of new, generative identitarian alternatives. It is on the basis of such considerations that this dissertation aims to analyse the negotiations of identity that emerge from the logic-defying encounter between human and non-human animals in “Mrs Fox”, a short story written by the extensively recognised contemporary British author Sarah Hall. A creative, textual articulation of posthuman becomings, this narrative exploits the inherent liminality of the short story genre as a site of dissidence and diversity as well as the remarkable effectiveness of the literary trope of human-animal metamorphosis to blur the species divide. As such, Hall’s “Mrs Fox” ultimately brings to the fore the affirmative approach to difference and the constitutive embodied and embedded inter-relationality that characterise posthuman, post-anthropocentric configurations of subjectivity.
Traballo Fin de Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións. Curso 2020-2021
2021-01-01T00:00:00ZAn Ecocritical Study of Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed FirsLorenzo Rial, Inéshttp://hdl.handle.net/10347/258012021-04-13T02:06:47Z2020-01-01T00:00:00ZAn Ecocritical Study of Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs
Lorenzo Rial, Inés
The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze whether the way of living depicted by Jewett
was realistic or rather an idealization of life in rural areas and, also, which factors contribute
to it being sustainable. Moreover, I aim at clarifying the role of women and the community in
protecting and perpetuating this lifestyle, since a good, equitable relationship among the
members of the community seems to be key to its survival, for care, cooperation, and a fair
distribution of resources depend on it. In the first section –“The Author and her Time”– I introduce the writer and her work, focusing on the characteristic traits of the genre she cultivated, local color. The second section –“Communion with Nature”– starts the literary analysis of the work. It deals with the importance of communion with nature in Country, for the survival of this community seems to depend on its ability to adapt to the land. In the third section –“Women and Community in The Country of the Pointed Firs”– I
analyze the connection between women, nature, and community in Country. First, I delve on
the reasons why this small town is constituted predominantly by women and how these
characters challenge the dominant gender constructs. Then, I analyze the connection between women and the making of this community, as well as the importance with which community life is infused
Traballo Fin de Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións. Curso 2019-2020
2020-01-01T00:00:00Z“Not evil or irredeemable”: Women, Bodies and Sorority in Donal Ryan’s All We Shall KnowSantos Barral, María Olallahttp://hdl.handle.net/10347/257952021-04-13T02:06:13Z2020-01-01T00:00:00Z“Not evil or irredeemable”: Women, Bodies and Sorority in Donal Ryan’s All We Shall Know
Santos Barral, María Olalla
It is my intention to provide an analysis of Donal Ryan’s novel All We Shall Know (2016) whose themes include an insight into the culture of the Irish Travellers, the complexity mother-daughter relationships, the burden of guilt and the possibility of redemption, among others. My aim is to analyse the intersections of gender and ethnicity in Donal Ryan’s work, applying concepts related to the female body and motherhood.
In the first chapter I will provide a summary of Donal Ryan’s novel, as well as a general commentary on the representation of the Irish Travellers in the novel, focusing on their status as the ‘other’. In the second section of the dissertation, first, I will offer some context for the situation of Traveller women, both in their culture and in the settled community. I will reflect, as well, on the experiences of the protagonist as a pregnant woman, connecting it with other issues such as abortion, infertility and sexuality, offering different accounts from the novel’s characters. In the last chapter, I set out to analyse relationships between the female characters, focusing on the topics of motherhood and sisterhood
Traballo Fin de Máster en Estudos Ingleses Avanzados e as súas Aplicacións. Curso 2019-2020
2020-01-01T00:00:00Z