Browsing by Author "Brown, Matthew J."
Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
- Results Per Page
- Sort Options
Item Affect and Empathy in Select Postmodern Works by Dick, Rushdie, Hosseini and Edson(2022-05-01T05:00:00.000Z) Siddiqui, Farah; Gossin, Pamela; Fechter, Todd; Brown, Matthew J.; Warren, Shilyh; Starnaman, SabrinaMy dissertation examines the social construction of affect and empathy in postmodern literature from 1968 to 2003. I explore the ways in which Philip K. Dick, Salman Rushdie, Khaled Hosseini, and Margaret Edson construct characters’ affects as individual in nature but social in origin through their focus on characters’ expression of flat affect, anxiety, paranoia and guilt. Frederic Jameson has labelled postmodern works as “waning in affect” by which he means that characters in these texts lack emotional depth and are tonally cold. On the contrary, the postmodern works that I examine represent the social construction of affect through different ideologies like nationalism, racism, and intellectualism that each create affective disorders and a resultant lack of empathy in the fictionalcharacters. My study focuses on two aspects of this representation: the social construction of affect and the development of characters’ empathy. I explore the social construction of affect by utilizing the current affect theory according to which individual affects are regarded as physiological in nature but influenced by the social environment. Such theory distinguishes between healthy and unhealthy affects, with unhealthy affects being associated with several different psychological disorders. Irrespective of their genre, through the works included in my study (science fiction, postcolonial fiction, or dramatic play), each author represents empathy as central to their characters’ moral well-being. By incorporating the latest research in neuroscience, this dissertation also exposes a myth about the literary representation of empathy, namely: that it functions through the sharing of affect and perspective-taking among characters alone. This selection of postmodern authors depicts empathy as an ethical trait that works by characters’ regulation of negative affect and the development of concern for others who do not belong to their in-group identifications. Ultimately, the representation of empathy in these literary texts relates to both characters’ moral compass and their redemption. These works may serve to teach empathy to theirreaders as such literary narratives may help audiences reduce biases.Item Ethics as a Rare Bird: A Challenge for Situated Studies of Ethics in the Engineering Lab(Routledge, 2019-04-25) Lee, Eun Ah; Gans, N. R.; Grohman, Magdalena G.; Brown, Matthew J.; 0000-0002-5361-5143 (Brown, MJ); 0000-0009-4356-7464 (Lee, EA); Lee, Eun Ah; Grohman, Magdalena G.; Brown, Matthew J.Engineering ethics cannot be reduced to the ethics of individual engineers but must be considered in situ, within the sociocultural and environmental contexts of a research or design project. We studied teams in academic engineering research laboratories and how they understood and practiced ethics in their own work. Problems arise for ethnographic methods for researching this aspect of engineering ethics; namely, voluntary ethics discussions rarely occurred in the lab. In our field site, we observed many spontaneous discussions, but engineering ethics issues were not among the topics discussed. Ethical decision-making seemed to be like a rare, shy species of bird, hard to spot, requiring methods to flush it out of hiding or attract it. We adapted structured interview and facilitated discussion protocols to accomplish this. Success was modest. The problem lies both in engineering culture and in the methodological difficulties in studying situated, distributed ethical deliberation and responsibility. ©2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.Item Making the (Super) Man: The Moral Code in Superhero Comics(2021-04-22) Johnson, Ryan L; Smith, Erin A.; Brown, Matthew J.This dissertation examines the role of superheroes in promoting social virtues in the readership. As part of the larger tradition of heroic adventure fiction, comic book superheroes serve as ideals of both a contemporary social ethos and a more timeless vision of masculine virtue. Jumping off from the more chronologically-oriented studies of Bradford Wright, Peter Coogan, and Grant Morrison, this work engages in case studies of several costumed vigilantes, analyzing them both as exemplars of the grander heroic ideal and as representatives of specific social concerns. In so doing, the thesis investigates the virtues being taught to readers and the manner in which such ideals are transmitted. In particular, these virtues center on the role of the reader in relation to the fantastic hero, offering a vision of subordinate, if not necessarily ersatz, manliness and power that is more performable in the real world, suggesting that character, an imitable feature for readers, is the central feature of a hero. Heroes from the Antediluvian Age to the Silver Age promise readers the potential for power if they only emulate the heroes of these narratives, while starting in the Bronze Age the rosters of heroism are noticeably broadened beyond the straight white males that previously dominated the field. This study focuses on how these modern myths and icons of heroic ideology are portrayed to invite all to perform a heroism and Manliness as a form of virtue.Item Mummy Issues: Representations of the Man of Science and the Monstrous Mummy in Bram Stoker’s the Jewel of Seven Stars(May 2023) Campbell, Teri L. 1957-; Gossin, Pamela; Scott, Andrew; Asma, Stephen; Wilson, Michael L.; Brown, Matthew J.; Brewer, KennethIn this dissertation, I examine fictional representations of nineteenth-century men of science in conflict with a monster that emerged from Western meddling in Egypt: the mummy. While my primary focus is on Bram Stoker’s novel The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903, 1912), I begin by tracing the development of the cultural and literary trends that ultimately led to the rise of the monstrous mummy: the British obsession with ancient Egyptian culture, the public unrolling of mummies as ostensibly scientific spectacles, the publication of the first British mummy novel in the early 1800s, and the late-century popularity of the mummy romance, a genre featuring beautiful female mummies as objects of romantic desire. My analysis of Stoker’s Jewel consists of three parts. In the first part, I examine the novel’s representations of men of science: male characters who work as amateurs or paid professionals in fields of specialized knowledge and who attempt to reach conclusions using the faculty of reason. Together, they represent multiple specialties in the areas of law, medicine, and Egyptology. I examine each character from the perspectives of status, scientific methodology, and character as revealed through physiognomy. I also provide historical context for the many disciplines referred to in the novel: forensics, neurology, hypnotism, archeology, and linguistics. The second part focuses on the mummy, Queen Tera. With reference to the theoretical works of Noël Carroll and Jeffrey Cohen, I argue that Tera is a “monster” who possesses both forbidden knowledge and supernatural power—specifically, the power of astral projection. In the third part, I break down the “Great Experiment” that is intended to reanimate the mummy, from the scientific space in which it is performed to the contradictory outcomes of the experiment in the 1903 and 1912 editions of the novel. Stoker creates a complex scientific narrative for the experiment that reimagines a supernatural process in terms of contemporary science, which I place in historical context. Ultimately, I argue that Jewel’s mummy is a monster created by a man of science—the feminine Nemesis to masculine scientific Hubris.