In this dissertation, I bring together film theory, literary criticism, anthropology and psychology to develop a paradigm for the study of teen films that can also be effectively applied to other areas of pop culture studies as well as literary genres. Expanding on Thomas Doherty's discussion of 1950s teen films and Ian Jarvie's study of films as social criticism, I argue that teen films are a discrete genre that appeals to adolescents to the exclusion of other groups. Teen films subvert social mores of the adult world and validate adolescent subculture by reflecting that subculture's values and viewpoints. The locus of this subversion is the means by which teenagers, through the teen films, vicariously experience anxiety-provoking adult subjects such as sexual experimentation and physical violence, particularly the extreme expressions of sex and violence that society labels taboo. Through analyzing the rhetoric of teen lifestyle films, specifically the teen romance and sex farce, I explore how the films offer teens vicarious experience of many adolescent "firsts." In addition, I claim that teen films can effectively appropriate other genres while remaining identifiable as teen films. I discuss hybrid films which combine the teen film with the science fiction genre, specifically Back to …

Born in 1862, Gerhart Hauptmann witnessed the creation of the German Empire, the Great War, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, and World War II before his death in 1946. Through his works as Germany's premier playwright, Hauptmann traces and exemplifies Germany's social, cultural, and political history during the late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and comments on the social and political climate of each era. Hauptmann wrote more than forty plays, twenty novels, hundreds of poems, and numerous journal articles that reveal his ideas on politics and society. His ideas are reinforced in the hundreds of unpublished volumes of his diary and his copious letters preserved in the Prussian Staatsbibliothek, Berlin. In the 1960s, Germans celebrated Hauptmann's centenary as authors who had known or admired Hauptmann published biographies that chronicled his life but revealed little of his private thoughts. This dissertation examines Hauptmann's life from his early childhood through his adult life with emphasis on social and political commentaries found in his works, diaries, and letters. Hauptmann told of the social problems alcohol and greed created and used historical events to express his concern about Germany's labor and social conditions. He also used historical events to address the political problems that …

This study is an historical and institutional analysis of The Lutheran Theological Seminary (LTS) in Hong Kong. The study first traces the seminary's theological and missiological roots and its history from 1913 to 1948, from its founding in Hubei Province, China to its move to Hong Kong because of civil war. Next, it describes major events of the early years in Hong Kong and the factors which contributed to an institutional crisis in the late 1960's. The study then analyzes the modern development of the institution, specifically the years 1971 to 1993. During this period several regional church groups joined together to create a collaborative educational effort through LTS, the school gained regional accreditation, expanded the ranks of its Chinese faculty, developed Asian financial support, and constructed a new campus. The modern development of the institution cannot be understood apart from a comprehension of the twenty-two year administration of Andrew Hsiao, the first Chinese president of the school. A chapter is therefore included on Andrew Hsiao's personal and academic background, the distinctives of his administration, and the strengths and weaknesses of his presidency. A current profile of the school is provided including its purposes, theology, organizational structure, faculty, student body, …

This dissertation explores Elizabeth Barrett's dependency on the archetypal Victorian patriarch. Chapter I focuses on the psychological effects of this father-daughter relationship on Elizabeth Barrett. Chapter II addresses Barrett's acceptance of the conventional female role, which is suggested by the nature and the situation of the women she chooses to depict. These women are placed in situations where they can reveal their devotion to family, their capacity for passive endurance, and their wish to resist. Almost always, they choose death as an alternative to life where a powerful father figure is present. Chapter III concentrates on the highly sentimental images of women and children whom Barrett places in a divine order, where they exist untouched by the concerns of the social order of which they are a part. Chapter IV shows that the conventional ideologies of the time, society's commitment to the "angel in the house," and the small number of female role models before her increase her difficulty to find herself a place within this order. Chapter V discusses Aurora Leigh's mission to find herself an identity and to maintain the connection with her father or father substitute. Despite Elizabeth Barrett's desire to break away from her paternal ties …

Jane Austen sprinkles deaths throughout her novels as plot devices and character indicators, but she does not tackle death directly. Yet death pervades her novels, in a subtle yet brutal way, in the lives of her female characters. Austen reveals that death was the definition and the destiny of women; it was the driving force behind the social and economic constructs that ruled the eighteenth-century woman's life, manifested in language, literature, religion, art, and even in a woman's doubts about herself. In Northanger Abbey Catherine Morland discovers that women, like female characters in gothic texts, are written and rewritten by the men whose language dominates them. Catherine herself becomes an example of real gothic when she is silenced and her spirit murdered by Henry Tilney. Marianne Dashwood barely escapes the powerful male constructs of language and literature in Sense and Sensibility. Marianne finds that the literal, maternal, wordless language of women counts for nothing in the social world, where patriarchal,figurative language rules, and in her attempt to channel her literal language into the social language of sensibility, she is placed in a position of more deadly nothingness, cast by society as a scorned woman and expected to die. Fanny Price …

In this study the author compares the broad outlines of Blake's and Dickinson's thought, pointing out evidence of decisive Biblical influence not only on the content of their thought but on their attitude toward language as well. the author argues that both poets assumed the philosophical position of Job as they interpreted the Bible independently and as they explored many dimensions of experience in the fallen world. The author represents their thought not as a fixed system but as a faith-based pattern of Christian/Platonic questing for truth.

This study documents a critical evaluation of the religious education curriculum used in Uganda's secondary schools. The study focused on goals and objectives, methods, content, and public perception of religious education instruction. The evaluation was based on a qualitative investigation that employed three methods to collect data: document analysis, classroom observation, and interviews. The investigation was guided by a series of research questions that included the following: What are the overall goals and objectives of religious education instruction? What are the attitudes from the community regarding religious education? What are the roles of religious leaders during implementation of this curriculum? How does the curriculum prepare students for the pluralistic nature of the society? What qualifications and training do the teachers have? What are the politics involved in curriculum implementation? What is the philosophy of religious education instruction as defined by policy makers and how is it implemented?

Joseph Campbell, in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, establishes a pattern for the hero to answer the call to adventure, ask the question of the goddess and receive her boon, and return to his homeland. Campbell does not, however, make any suggestions about a myth whose protagonist is female. Erich Neumann, in The Origins and History of Consciousness, hints that the woman may, indeed, be her own goddess, that she must give herself the boon she already carries. The novels of Anita Brookner illustrate the dual nature of the feminine protagonist: the seeker and the boon giver. The feminine hero (even when Brookner's protagonist is masculine, he exhibits feminine qualities) hears the call to adventure, receives the teachings of the goddess and/or her representative, receives help fromother beings (in myth these would be supernatural beings), realizes that she carries the answer to the cosmic question of selfhood within her, and, following an apotheosis, makes a return to society. Much of the present work is spent delving into both the monomythic and feminist structures of Brookner's novels. Although Brookner characterizes herself as a "reluctant feminist," examination of her novels reveals a subtle adherence to feminist principles which can be ascertained …