Department of Languages, Lingustics and Comparative Literature

The Arbëresh of Italy founded their communities in the 1400s when they were
forced to flee their homeland, Albania, as the country was conquered and ruled by the
Ottoman Empire. For centuries, they kept a close community in the Italian villages
preserving their language, culture, rituals and traditions. These elements have defined
them as “others” in the Italian community over the centuries, but today, they are better
described as Italians who also embrace the Arbëresh culture.
This dissertation explores the narratives of Arbëresh authors such as Carmine
Abate, Anna Stratigò, and Pino Cacozza, who have preserved glimpses of their culture in
their writings, thus creating an oasis that I call “the Arbëresh Utopia.” I situate them in
the larger context of Arbëresh history, and in the environment where their stories are
located. A recent research conducted through interviews in the Arbëresh towns of
Calabria, will add an important “lived” tassel of information, by exploring the Arbëresh
culture today in a state of what Michel Foucault calls heterotopia. After many years of
living in a closed community, the Arbëresh have learned to live by addition.

Based on Noam Chomsky’s argument that the faculty of language is primarily a
tool of thought whose purpose is to interpret the world, this dissertation argues that
reading literature provides a cognitive experience like John Gardner’s “Fictive Dream”
that mimics our interpretive experience of the world. Literary experience exploits
language as an epistemological faculty that makes aspects of the external world
intelligible. Yet the faculty of language is also capable of evoking entirely mental worlds
that do not reflect the mindexternal
world. Because the literary experience is entirely
mindinternal,
even the cultural knowledge we bring into play for its understanding still
relies on innate features of language. Thus, during the act of reading, we hold this
cultural knowledge in abeyance, allowing the text to structure how we bring it to bear on
the experience as a whole.
A scientific approach to literature can help uncover principles to further elucidate
the literaryepistemological
experience. Whereas much literary criticism assumes that a critic’s purpose is to mine a text for its deeper meaning, this dissertation argues for a
Cognitive Formalist approach in which criticism serves not simply to explain the
experience evoked by any particular text according to linguisticepistemological
principles, but also to evaluate the moral implications of that specific textual experience.
As a means of demonstrating potential implications of a scientific cognitive
approach to literary criticism based on linguisticepistemological
understanding, the
current study offers sample passages from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
These passages allow us to offer first approximations of some explanatory principles of
the literaryepistemological
experience, such as the importance of fictive time and
fictional event sequences, which in turn gives us greater insight into how, for example,
verb tense and aspect contribute to the evocation of the action of fiction in the reader’s
mind. Ultimately, the fictive vantage point constructed by the text allows the reader
access to a complex moral framework in which fictive characters are understood to make
choices that will in turn set the stage for the reader’s own ethical reception of the text and
the experience it offers.

This dissertation makes the connection between the human drive, as described by psychoanalysis, to construct God and the construction of the technological entity, Google. Google constitutes the extension of the early Christian period God to the twenty-first century. From the examination of significant religious and theological texts by significant theologians (Augustine, Thomas, Luther, Calvin, etc.) that explain the nature of God, the analogous relationship of God to Google will open a psychoanalytic discourse that answers questions on the current state of human mediation with the world. Freud and, more significantly, Lacan’s work connects the human creation of God, ex nihilio, to Google’s godly qualities and behaviors (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and omnibenevolence). This illustrates the powerful motivation behind the creation of an all-encompassing physical / earthly entity that includes the immaterial properties of God. Essentially, Google operates as the extension or replacement of the long reigning God in Western culture. Furthermore, the advent of science and technology through rationalism (as outlined by Nietzsche) results in the death of the metaphysical God and the ascension of the technological God. Google offers an appropriate example for study. Moreover, the work of Jean Baudrillard and Marshall McLuhan will further comment on Google as the technological manifestation of God, particularly in its media formulations. Finally, this dissertation concludes with a review that highlights future research with an exploration that foresees the death of Google from the same rational method of inquiry by which the death of God occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.

This study examines the representation of women in Emile Zola’s famous series Les Rougon-Macquart. Critics have described Zola’s novels and their presentation of women as misogynist, yet this judgment obscures many of the textual details establishing the female protagonists’ relationships to industrial capitalism and the rapidly changing social landscape in late nineteenth century France. This study reexamines the narrative synthesis between Zola’s naturalist “objective” narrator and his female protagonists. It also highlights one particular pairing that of Adelaide Fouque and her opportunist daughter-in-law, Felicité Puch: Whereas Adelaide, the biological matriarch of the family who figures in each of the twenty novels, does not have an active voice, Felicité as maternal protectrice of the family speaks frankly, even aggressively. Zola uses this pairing to link one generation to the next, a key structural element of his naturalist project. Ultimately, Zola’s representation of women is more complex than might otherwise be understood.

Renaissance and Baroque drama offers a view into gender dynamics of the
time. What is seen is a development in the allowed expression and manifestation of
desire by females, beginning from a point of near silence, and arriving at points of
verbal statement and even physical violence. Specifically, in La Mandragola by
Niccolò Machiavelli, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, and Fuenteovejuna
by Lope de Vega, there appears a chronological progression, whereby using desire
and its expression as a metric in conjunction with modern concepts of gender and
sexuality to measure a shift in relation to what is and is not allowed to be expressed
by women.

This dissertation sketched key structural-functional design characteristics of the
Temple in Jerusalem as they emerge from archeological finds, academic scholarship, and
rabbinic literary and legal traditions. It illustrated numerous embodied and functional
parallels, with detailed descriptions of two successful American Synagogues drawing on
the documents of social history, one built and led by the leadership of a lay community
and the other dominated by a renowned Rabbi. Both synagogues seem to have inherited,
continued, and celebrated venerable purposes that the rise of synagogues once took over
from the ideals of the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem. Synagogues become successful
institutions when they serve their communities, meeting self-perceived as well as
pressing needs, through a willingness to accomplish multiple and diverse purposes.

This thesis investigates the discourse patterns of Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush during the Republican primary campaign from August 2015 through January 2016. The goal of this study is to identify differences among the candidates’ discourse patterns, particularly those distinct to the discourse style of Donald Trump, on the basis of a newly compiled corpus from their respective debates and speeches.
This corpus analysis reveals differences in terms of readability and lexical choice that distinguish the speech style of Donald Trump from Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and identifies metaphors utilized by Donald Trump. Drawing heavily from the research of Charles Fillmore and George Lakoff, this study also illustrates the importance of metaphors and frames within political discourse, and the corpus analysis of Republican candidates during the 2016 election provides clear evidence that candidates use frames and metaphors to create a unique profile.

This dissertation presents a Whiteheadian interpretation of the notions of mind,
immanence and process as they are addressed in the Zohar. According to many scholars,
this kabbalistic creation story as portrayed in the Zohar is a reaction to the earlier
rabbinic concept of God qua creator, which emphasized divine transcendence over divine
immanence. The medieval Jewish philosophers, particularly Maimonides influenced by
Aristotle, placed particular emphasis on divine transcendence, seeing a radical separation
between Creator and creation. With this in mind, these scholars claim that one of the
goals of the Zohar’s creation story was to emphasize God’s immanence within creation.
Similar to the Zohar, the process metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead and his
followers was reacting to the substance metaphysics that had dominated Western
philosophy as far back as ancient Greek thought. Whitehead adopts a very similar
narrative to that of the Zohar. First there is mind containing all the eternal objects which
serve as potential for the creation (God’s primordial nature). Mind becomes immanent in all actual occasions through prehension (God’s consequent nature). Finally God becomes
“the lure” (to use Whitehead’s phrase) in the ongoing process of nature (God as
superject). In this narrative, God is not the static being, the unmoved mover as discussed
by Aristotle, but rather, is portrayed as a dynamic becoming, a God of process.
Due to these significant similarities between Whitehead’s process philosophy and
the Zohar with regard to the immanence of God and the process of creation, it is
worthwhile to attempt a process interpretation of the kabbalistic creation story. The first
part of this dissertation is entitled Philosophical Foundations, focusing on the intellectual
framework of this study of the Zohar. The second part is entitled Creating a Narrative,
looking at the text of the Zohar through the lens of Whitehead’s metaphysics. Finally,
the conclusion looks at the narrative and discusses whether the goals of the dissertation
have been achieved.

This dissertation examines how the Global Peace Film Festival of Orlando, Florida, facilitates the construction of cosmopolitan identities within the context of humanitarianism and activism. An expansion of the notion of "peace"to include multiple levels of meaning is crucial to the identity of the festival, as it allows the screening of an array of films that appeal to the broad range of spectators and community organizations that interact with the event. Within the context of the Global Peace Film Festival, various discourses surrounding peace participate in the process of cognitively mapping the world and situating the self within it as a cosmopolitan citizen. The centrality of the self is key to understanding how audiences create solidarity with the other, and how they might choose to respond to appeals for humanitarian aid. The contemporary humanitarian imaginary builds solidarity between the viewer and the other-in-need in a manner that is rooted in self-reflection, creating an ironic spectator of vulnerable others and setting the stage for solutions to humanitarian problems that fit into personal lifestyle choices. This study examines the complexity inherent to the articulation between producers, audiences and films, and how meaning is negotiated on a local level. Witnessing and testimonial are key practices for engaging spectators, and the testimonial encounter has a transformative power for audiences that may be channeled into various responses to calls for action. An emerging practice is significant as well, a new situatedness of the documentary filmmaker as a central figure in the promotion of both films and humanitarian causes. This practice provides a role for the filmmaker as both entrepreneur and activist, easing the tension between the goals of humanitarianism and capitalistic concerns, while positioning the film as a tool rather than an aesthetic object and echoing the preeminence of self in our contemporary society. The Global Peace Film festival takes an innovative approach to promoting change, moving from a traditional exhibition model to an "engagement" model that focuses on the involvement of the local community.

This study aims to analyze three popular U.S. children’s TV shows – Dora the
Explorer (Nickelodeon), Maya & Miguel (PBS) and Handy Manny (Disney Channel) – in
terms of their incorporation of Spanish. Qualitative and quantitative measures were used
to assess the frequency and types of code switching both in the context of bilingualism
and language pedagogy. The study revealed different strategies of language choice and
socio-cultural objectives for each show. A close analysis of language choice in the three
children’s TV programs revealed distinct approaches to TV writing in the name of raising awareness of ethnic diversity, developing cultural literacy, and brand marketing.