Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Knowledge, Theory of, in literature'

In the literature on reflection in teaching, authors frequently lament the lack of clarity in understandings of this concept, despite its wide acceptance as a phenomenon beneficial to teaching and learning. This dissertation reports a study of this literature that attempts to clarify the meaning of reflection and to establish a methodology for examining such a complex concept. Three analyses, each intended to explore the literature on reflection from a different perspective, comprise the study. The first is an analysis of the literature on reflection in three professional communities---continuing professional development, higher education and teacher education---to establish general themes in this literature. The second analysis examines definitions of reflection from the three communities, focusing in particular on processes and rationales of reflection. The third analysis explores a variety of critiques of reflection to determine predominant epistemologies and recurring themes in the literature. The merging of the results of the three analyses leads to a framework for understanding reflection. This integrative framework highlights the importance of underlying epistemologies as the bases for different understandings of reflection and shows the intricate interrelationships among four major themes in the literature: the processes involved in reflection, the rationales behind it, the context in which it occurs, and its connection to action. The framework also points to the link between the self and the reflective context, the possibilities of reflection in-, on-, for-, and as-action, the unclear connection between the cognitive and affective processes and the movement from internal to external rationales. The study contributes both conceptually and methodologically by making sense of the range of ways reflection has been understood and by providing a possible model for exploring a complex concept. It provides a consistent language for discussing reflection, demonstrates the complexities of the concept and the interrelationships of the themes contained in the literature, allows for the situating of individual works within the literature, increases understanding of the connection of reflection and action, and helps to position the concept of reflection within broader theories of cognition and social practice.

Resulting in the development of a framework labelled Literary Pedagogical Content Knowledge (LPCK), this thesis aimed to describe the complex interplay of three components in primary school classrooms: content, pedagogy, and children's literature. A case study research design elicited descriptive evidence of nine teachers' understandings of the teaching of children's literature, recognising that teacher knowledge bases involve complex, situated knowledge. The thesis, underpinned by constructivism and through the use of semi-structured interviews, built on Shulman's formulation of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) by considering teachers' alignment with Literary Theory.

This study uses academic literature from peer-reviewed journals to assess the literary consensus of the three perspectives. The literature has been found by using specific keywords and an assortment of scholarly databases. The analysis of the literature is structured according to explanations for alliance formation, the attainment of advantages, and disadvantages according to the perspectives. The study is written in article format. Conclusions: The perspectives both overlap and differ from one another but focus on different aspects and incentives. There are, however, more similarities between the resource-based and knowledge-based views. Transaction cost theory and the knowledge-based view are narrow explanatory models, whereas the resource-based view offers a broader view on alliances.

What might it mean to attempt to figure theatre as thought? More specifically, what possible relations hold between theatre and epistemology - that area of philosophy concerned with theories of knowledge? This study is a series of cross-disciplinary engagements that seek to articulate some of the relations between theatre, performance, and epistemology, to investigate performance as a 'deployed logic' in relation to those disciplines concerned with discovering and generating knowledge. For some thinkers in the continental tradition, the very thought of writing about the relations between performance and the anachronistic; hasn't the idea of 'performance' undermined most of the central tenets of the discourse concerned with knowledge and the Real, with truth and falsity? This, of course, remains an open question, one pursued in this work. The thesis draws on a diverse series of wide-ranging examples in order to relate the inquiry to current work being done in philosophy and performance studies, but notes the theoretical incompleteness of studies relating theatre and performance to conceptions of knowledge.It attempts to fill a void in the literature by offering analyses that think the relations between dramatic and philosophical activity. In short, it hopes to re-open the dialogue between performance and epistemology by showing how philosophy regularly attempts to expunge its foundational elements from its imaginary.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The main problem posed in this thesis is an epistemological one to do with what counts as knowledge in the organisation/management and management accounting areas of scholarship. This question arose regarding discrepancies between an original text, Burns and Stalker's The Management of Innovation (1961, 1966, 1994), and longstanding representations in the mainstream literature. The discrepancies were between the largely objectivist representations focussing on the relationship between organisation structure and environmental contingency, while omitting subjectivist factors and organisational processes, also significant in Burns and Stalker's analysis. The analysis in this thesis is concerned with two main questions: the similarities and differences between The Management of Innovation and mainstream representations; and explanations for these, particularly for the differences. The analytical framework is critical realist theory underpinned by an Hegelian dialectical methodology, looking at phenomena from different perspectives with inconsistencies addressed by a more holistic analysis. This thesis is based on a non-linear, multi-angled approach, which examines each of the two questions from different perspectives through two dialectical circles. A detailed analysis of Burns and Stalker's work and mainstream representations enabled clarity regarding the different foci in the two sets of texts. The absenting of human factors and organisational processes in much mainstream scholarship was found to extend beyond representations of Burns and Stalker's work to orthodox scholarship more widely, despite strong and persistent critiques from within the field. The dialectical opposition constructed between objectivist and subjectivist factors was investigated further and linked to attitudes regarding the commensurability of different approaches in the social sciences, particularly in the organisation/management and management accounting fields. It is suggested that this opposition is based on a particular view of science and scientific method. A broader interpretation however shows that science is also influenced by researchers' subjectivities. This has led to an argument for the complementary, more holistic approaches already present in the field becoming more widespread in the interests of more sustainable and emancipatory knowledge.

Focusing on the A-text (1604) version of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus , this study further assesses biographical information on the poet and intellectual currents of the Counter Reformation, so as to investigate the play's relation to emergent trends of individualism in the Renaissance, recovery of the pagan past, and intellectual aspirations that could readily collide with orthodoxy. Clearly reflecting anxieties of the period about individual deviance from social norms through intellectual overreaching, Doctor Faustus powerfully testifies to the potential dangers of human aspiration and the scholarly spirit of unbounded learning. While thus exploring the exotic temptations of forbidden knowledge, the play resurrects and interrogates traditional taboos which related intellectual appetite to wrongful lust. Marlowe stages an explosive conflict between the conservative tradition of intellectual inquiry, which distrusted the unorthodox scholarship and Neoplatonic magic that some widely influential thinkers promoted in the Italian Renaissance, and Faustus's own creative desires, ambitions, and imagination. The tension between proscribed and prescribed knowledge climaxes in the invocation of Helen of Troy. While Helen's significance is complex, we find that, in relation to the play's concern with dissent from orthodoxy, she focuses the power of intellectual longing to seduce and ravish the mind. Apart from being a superior play, Doctor Faustus encapsulates Marlowe's awareness of his period's uneasy perception of unconventional thinking, and urges the importance of challenging restrictions on how much one is permitted to know.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 246-250). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

My thesis aims to anatomize the cognitive theory of metaphor and suggests a Peircean semiotic perspective on metaphor study. As metaphorical essentialists, Lakoff/Johnson tend to universalize a limited number of conceptual metaphors and, by doing this, they overlook the dynamic relation between metaphorical tenor and vehicle. Such notion of metaphor is not compatible with the polysemous nature of the sign. The diversity and multivalency of metaphorical vehicle, in particular, cast serious doubts on the hypothesis of “conceptual metaphors” which, being meta-metaphorical constructs, can tell us nothing but a dry and empty formula “A is B”. Consequently, Lakoff/Johnson’s notion of conceptual metaphor is very much a Chomskyan postulation. Also problematic is the expedient experientialism or embodied philosophy they have put forward as a middle course between objectivism and subjectivism. What is missing from their framework is a structural space for dynamic interpretation on the part of metaphor users. In contrast, cognitive linguists may find in Peirce’s theory of the sign a sound solution to their theoretical impasse. As a logician, Peirce sees metaphor as the realization of iconic reasoning at the language level. His exposition on iconicity and iconic reasoning has laid a solid foundation upon which may be erected a fresh epistemology of metaphor fit for the contemporary study of language and mind. Broadly speaking, metaphor in Peirce can be examined from roughly two perspectives. Macroscopically, metaphor is an icon in general as opposed to index and symbol, whereas, microscopically, it is a subdivided hypoicon on the third level as opposed to image and diagram. Besides, Peirce also emphasized the subjective nature of metaphor. Semioticians after Peirce have further developed his theory on metaphor. For example, through his concept of “arbitrary iconicity”, Ersu Ding stresses the arbitrary nature of metaphorization and tries to shift our attention away from Lakoff/Johnson’s abstract epistemological Gestalt to the specific cultural contexts in which metaphors occur. Umberto Eco, on the other hand, sees interpretation of signs as an open-ended process that involves knowledge of all kinds. Encyclopedic knowledge thus serves as unlimited source for metaphorical association. For Eco, the meaning of a metaphor should be interpreted in the cultural framework based on a specific cultural community. Both Ding’s and Eco’s ideas are in line with Peirce’s theoretical framework where the meaning of a metaphor depends on an interpreter in a particular socio-historical context. They all realize that we should go beyond the ontology of metaphorical expressions to acquire a dynamic perspective on metaphor interpretation. To overcome the need for presupposing an omnipotent subject capable of knowing the metaphor-in-itself, we turn to Habermas’s theory of communicative action in which the meaning of metaphor is intersubjectively established through negotiation and communication. Moreover, we should not overlook the dynamic tension between metaphor and ideology. Aphoristically, we can say that nothing is a metaphor unless it is interpreted as a metaphor, and we need to reconnect metaphors with the specific cultural and ideological contexts in which they appear.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze how the film Freedom Writers, released in 2007 anddirected by Richard LaGravenese, reflects on the topic of racism. The analysis is based on twoof the key tenets of Critical Race Theory, “Whiteness as Property” and “Commitment to SocialJustice”, which are used as analytical tools. Furthermore, the analysis also includes RacialIdentity Development Theory, which represents different stages of development as people beginto define themselves in relation to others. This thesis further evaluates pedagogical implicationsin connection to the analysis of Freedom Writers and Critical Race Theory. The results showthat racism is depicted in Freedom Writers through the concept of Whiteness as Property, andthe differences between white characters and characters of color are significant due to theirdifferent views on social justice. In addition, the results show that Freedom Writers may serveas a thought-provoking resource to use in the Swedish EFL classroom to create awareness aboutand discuss the importance of aspects such as racism, empowerment, and social justice in theworld and with regard to the students’ own knowledge.

George MacDonald's novel Lilith relates the story of a young man inheriting his deceased father's estate and coming in contact with its remarkable library and mysterious librarian. The protagonist's subsequent adventures in a fantastical world prepare the young Mr. Vane to assume authority over his inherited archive and become an archon. Jacques Derrida's exposition of the responsibilities of the archon including archival authority, domiciliation, and consignation illuminate the mentoring role of the elusive librarian Mr. Raven in Vane's adventures. By using Derrida's deconstruction of archives to unpack the intricacies of knowledge transfer in MacDonald's novel, the lasting impact of the archon on the archive and the individuals in Lilith, as well as the importance of the archon in the transfer of knowledge between individuals facilitated through relationships, becomes apparent. The archon, acting as a gatherer, organizer, and shaper of texts, uses the materials within the archive to exercise power and to bequeath power upon other individuals, as seen in the character Mr. Raven's actions. Lilith illustrates the necessity of the archon as he shapes the archive's contents and governs the interactions between book and reader, ultimately allowing the archive to become a place where knowledge is heritable.

Novel The Fellow What is knowledge? Who should own it? Why is it used? Who can use it? Is knowledge power, or is it an illusion? These are some of the questions addressed in The Fellow. At the time of Australian federation, the year 1901, while a nation is being drawn into unity, one of its primary educational institutions is being drawn into disunity when an outsider challenges the secure world of The University of Melbourne. Arriving in Melbourne after spending much of his life travelling around Australia, an old Jack-of-all-trades bushman finds his way into the inner sanctum of The University of Melbourne. Not only a man of considerable and varied skill, he is also a man who is widely read and self-educated. However, he applies his knowledge in practical ways, based on what he has experienced in the

In this dissertation, I examine the influence of Pyrrhonist skepticism over Shakespeare’s sonnets. Unlike academic skepticism, which begins from a position of doubt, Pyrrhonist skepticism encourages an embrace of multiple perspectives that, according to Sextus Empiricus, leads first to a suspension of judgment and ultimately to a state of tranquility. The Pyrrhonian inflection of Shakespeare’s sonnets accounts for the pleasure and uncertainty they cultivate in readers. By offering readers multiple perspectives on a given issue, such as love or infidelity, Shakespeare’s sonnets demonstrate the instability of information, suggesting that such instability can be a source for pleasure. One essential tool for the uncertainty in the sonnets, I argue, is the figurative language they draw from a variety of fields and discourses. When these metaphors contradict one another, creating fragmented images in the minds of readers, they generate a unique aesthetic experience, which creates meaning that transcends the significance of any of the individual metaphors. In the first two chapters, I identify important contexts for Shakespeare’s sensitivity to the pliability of figurative language: Reformation-era religious tracts and pamphleteers’ debates about the value and function of the theater. In Chapter 3, I examine Shakespeare’s response to the Petrarchan tradition, arguing that he diverges from the sonneteers, who often use figurative language in an attempt to access and communicate stable truths. Shakespeare creates epistemological instability in sonnets both to the young man and to the dark lady, and, as I argue in Chapter 4, this similarity offers readers an opportunity to think beyond traditional divisions between the two sonnet subsequences.

More than 2.6 million troops have deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, surveys reveal that more than half feel “disconnected” from their civilian counterparts, and this feeling persists despite ongoing efforts, in the academy and elsewhere, to help returning veterans overcome physical and mental wounds, seek an education, and find meaningful ways to contribute to society after taking off the uniform. This dissertation argues that Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans struggle with reassimilation because they lack healthy, complete models of veteran identity to draw upon in their postwar lives, a problem they’re working through collectively in literature and artwork. The war veteran—returning home transformed by the harsh realities of military training and service, having seen humanity at its extremes, and interacting with a society apathetic toward his or her experiences—should engage in the act of storytelling. This act of sharing experiences and crafting-self subverts stereotypes. Storytelling, whether in a book read by millions, or in a single conversation with a close family member, should instruct civilians on the topic of human resiliency; it should instruct veterans on the topic of homecoming. But typically, veterans do not tell stories. Civilians create barriers to storytelling in the form of hollow platitudes—“thank you for your service” or “I can never understand what you’ve been through”—disconnected from the meaning of wartime service itself. The dissonance between veteran and civilian only becomes more complicated when one considers the implicit demands and expectations attached to patriotism. These often well-intentioned gestures and government programs fail to convey a message of appreciation because they refuse to convey a message of acceptance; the exceptional treatment of veterans by larger society implies also that they are insufficient, broken, or incomplete. So, many veterans chose conformity and silence, adopting one of two identities available to them: the forever pitied “Wounded Warrior” or the superficially praised “Hero.” These identities are not complete. They’re not even identities as much as they are collections of rumors, misrepresentations, and expectations of conformity. Once an individual veteran begins unconsciously performing the “Wounded Warrior” or “Hero” character, the number of potential outcomes available in that individual’s life is severely diminished. Society reinforces a feeling among veterans that they are “different.” This shared experience has resulted in commiseration, camaraderie, and also the proliferation of veterans’ creative communities. As storytellers, the members of these communities are restoring meaning to veteran-civilian discourse by privileging the nuanced experiences of the individual over stereotypes and emotionless rhetoric. They are instructing on the topics of war and homecoming, producing fictional and nonfictional representations of the veteran capable of competing with stereotypes, capable of reassimilation. The Introduction establishes the existence of veteran culture, deconstructs notions of there being a single or binary set of veteran identities, and critiques the social and cultural rhetoric used to maintain symbolic boundaries between veterans and civilians. It begins by establishing an approach rooted in interdisciplinary literary theory, taking veteran identity as its topic of consideration and the American unconscious as the text it seeks to examine, asking readers to suspend belief in patriotic rhetoric long enough to critically examine veteran identity as an apparatus used to sell war to each generation of new recruits. Patriotism, beyond the well-meaning gestures and entitlements afforded to veterans, also results in feelings of “difference,” in the veteran feeling apart from larger society. The inescapability of veteran “difference” is a trait which sets it apart from other cultures, and it is one bolstered by inaccurate and, at times, offensive portrayals of veterans in mass media and Hollywood films such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), First Blood (1982), or Taxi Driver (1976). To understand this inescapability the chapter engages with theories of race, discussing the Korean War veteran in Home (2012) and other works by Toni Morrison to directly and indirectly explore descriptions of “difference” by African Americans and “others” not in positions of power. From there, the chapter traces veteran identity back to the Italian renaissance, arguing that modern notions of veteran identity are founded upon fears of returning veterans causing chaos and disorder. At the same time, writers such as Sebastian Junger, who are intimately familiar with veteran culture, repeatedly emphasize the camaraderie and “tribal” bonds found among members of the military, and instead of creating symbolic categories in which veterans might exist exceptionally as “Heroes,” or pitied as “Wounded Warriors,” the chapter argues that the altruistic nature which leads recruits to war, their capabilities as leaders and educators, and the need of larger society for examples of human resiliency are more appropriate starting points for establishing veteran identity. The Introduction is followed by an independent “Example” section, a brief examination of a student veteran named “Bingo,” one who demonstrates an ability to challenge, even employ veteran stereotypes to maintain his right to self-definition. Bingo’s story, as told in a “spotlight” article meant to attract student veterans to a college campus, portrays the veteran as a “Wounded Warrior” who overcomes mental illness and the scars of war through education, emerging as an exceptional example—a “Hero”—that other student veterans can model by enrolling at the school. Bingo’s story sets the stage for close examinations of the “Hero” and the “Wounded Warrior” in the first and second chapters. Chapter One deconstructs notions of heroism, primarily the belief that all veterans are “Heroes.” The chapter examines military training and indoctrination, Medal of Honor award citations, and film examples such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Heroes for Sale (1933), Sergeant York (1941), and Top Gun (1986) to distinguish between actual feats of heroism and “Heroes” as they are presented in patriotic rhetoric. The chapter provides the Medal of Honor citations attached to awards presented to Donald Cook, Dakota Meyer, and Kyle Carpenter, examining the postwar lives of Meyer and Carpenter, identifying attempts by media and government officials to appropriate heroism—to steal the right to self-definition possessed by these men. Among these Medal of Honor recipients one finds two types of heroism: Sacrificing Heroes give something of themselves to protect others; Attacking Heroes make a difference during battle offensively. Enduring Heroes, the third type of heroism discussed in the chapter, are a new construct. Colloquially, and for all intents and purposes, an Enduring Hero is simply a veteran who enjoys praise and few questions. Importantly, veterans enjoy the “Hero Treatment” in exchange for silence and conforming to larger narratives which obfuscate past wars and pave the way for new ones. This chapter engages with theorists of gender—such as Jack Judith Halberstam, whose Female Masculinities (1998) anticipates the agency increasingly available to women through military service; like Leo Braudy, whose From Chivalry to Terrorism (2003) traces the historical relationship between war and gender before commenting on the evolution of military masculinity—to discuss the relationship between heroism and agency, begging a question: What do veterans have to lose from the perpetuation of stereotypes? This question frames a detailed examination of William A. Wellman’s film, Heroes for Sale (1933), in the chapter’s final section. This story of stolen valor and the Great Depression depicts the homecoming of a WWI veteran separated from his heroism. The example, when combined with a deeper understanding of the intersection between veteran identity and gender, illustrates not only the impact of stolen valor in the life of a legitimate hero, but it also comments on the destructive nature of appropriation, revealing the ways in which a veteran stereotypes rob service men and women of the right to draw upon memories of military service which complete with those stereotypes. The military “Hero” occupies a moral high ground, but most conceptions of military “Heroes” are socially constructed advertisements for war. Real heroes are much rarer. And, as the Medal of Honor recipients discussed in the chapter reveal, they, too, struggle with lifelong disabilities as well as constant attempts by society to appropriate their narratives. Chapter Two traces the evolution of the modern “Wounded Warrior” from depictions of cowardice in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (1895), to the denigration of World War I veterans afflicted with Shell Shock, to Kevin Powers’s Iraq War novel, The Yellow Birds (2012). As with “Heroes,” “Wounded Warriors” perform a stereotype in place of an authentic, individualized identity, and the chapter uses Walt Kowalski, the protagonist of Clint Eastwood’s film, Gran Torino (2008), as its major example. The chapter discusses “therapeutic culture,” Judith Butler’s work on identity-formation, and Eva Illouz’s examination of a culture obsessed with trauma to comment on veteran performances of victimhood. Butler’s attempts to conceive of new identities absent the influence of systems of definition rooted in the state, in particular, reveal power in the opposite of silence, begging another question: What do civilians have to gain from the perpetuation of veteran stereotypes? Largely, the chapter finds, the “Wounded Warrior” persists in the minds of civilians who fear the veteran’s capacity for violence. A broken, damaged veteran is less of a threat. The story of the “Wounded Warrior” is not one of sacrifice. The “Wounded Warrior” exists after sacrifice, beyond any measure of “honor” achieved in uniform. “Wounded Warriors” are not expected to find a cure because the wound itself is an apparatus of the state that is commodified and injected into the currency of emotional capitalism. This chapter argues that military service and a damaged psyche need not always occur together. Following the second chapter, a close examination of “The Bear That Stands,” a short story by Suzanne S. Rancourt which confronts the author’s sexual assault while serving in the Marines, offers an alternative to both the “Hero” and the “Wounded Warrior” stereotypes. Rancourt, a veteran “Storyteller,” gives testimony of that crime, intervening in social conceptions of veteran identity to include a female perspective. As with the example of Bingo, the author demonstrates an innate ability to recognize and challenge the stereotypes discussed in the first and second chapters. This “Example” sets the stage for a more detailed examination of “Veteran Storytellers” and their communities in the final chapter. Chapter Three looks for examples of veteran “difference,” patriotism, the “Wounded Warrior,” and the “Hero” in nonfiction, fiction, and artwork emerging from the creative arts community, Military Experience and the Arts, an organization which provides workshops, writing consultation, and publishing venues to veterans and their families. The chapter examines veteran “difference” in a short story by Bradley Johnson, “My Life as a Soldier in the ‘War on Terror.’” In “Cold Day in Bridgewater,” a work of short fiction by Jerad W. Alexander, a veteran must confront the inescapability of that difference as well as expectations of conformity from his bigoted, civilian bartender. The final section analyzes artwork by Tif Holmes and Giuseppe Pellicano, which deal with the problems of military sexual assault and the effects of war on the family, respectively. Together, Johnson, Alexander, Holmes, and Pellicano demonstrate skills in recognizing stereotypes, crafting postwar identities, and producing alternative representations of veteran identity which other veterans can then draw upon in their own homecomings. Presently, no unified theory of veteran identity exists. This dissertation begins that discussion, treating individual performances of veteran identity, existing historical, sociological, and psychological scholarship about veterans, and cultural representations of the wars they fight as equal parts of a single text. Further, it invites future considerations of veteran identity which build upon, challenge, or refute its claims. Conversations about veteran identity are the opposite of silence; they force awareness of war’s uncomfortable truths and homecoming’s eventual triumphs. Complicating veteran identity subverts conformity; it provides a steady stream of traits, qualities, and motivations that veterans use to craft postwar selves. The serious considerations of war and homecoming presented in this text will be useful for Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans attempting to piece together postwar identities; they will be useful to scholars hoping to facilitate homecoming for future generations of war veterans. Finally, the Afterword to the dissertation proposes a program for reassimilation capable of harnessing the veteran’s symbolic and moral authority in such a way that self-definition and homecoming might become two parts of a single act.

The House of Mirth's main character, Lily Bart, is charaterized a fated character, incapable of exerting free will. With the help of Lawrence Selden and Gerty Farish, she realizes that, for the most part, she has lived and acted according to what others expect of her.

In a suggestion to build upon students’ historical knowledge through reading The Remains of the Day, this essay delves into cross-curricular teaching, dual-coded theory aspects and revision of suggested plans to improve learner’s understanding of historical novels, characters, events, and descriptions to grasp and reflect upon such historical knowledge. Several methods for enhancing students’ knowledge and to improve vocabulary knowledge are provided. The essay is theoretically based and presents different aspects of how students’ knowledge of English and history as separate subjects in school, could be combined to address the learning abilities of all students. Reading comprehension is mainly based upon students’ prior knowledge. Therefore, this essay delves into various parts of learners’ abilities to reflect upon the written word and its significance to reality. Furthermore, suggestions to how teachers can collaborate to achieve an improved understanding of the novel and its time period through history and vocabulary is presented.

En els seus assaigs L’art du roman, Les testaments trahis i Le rideau, l’escriptor txec Milan Kundera proposa una concepció de la novel·la com a forma de coneixement de l’existència. Aquesta idea es fonamenta, d’una banda, en la seva pràctica com a novel·lista i, de l’altra, en la seva exegesi de l’obra dels seus autors de capçalera: Hermann Broch, Robert Musil i Franz Kafka. A partir de l’anàlisi de les lectures de Kundera es proposa un estudi crític sobre la noció de ‘coneixement específicament novel·lesc’, basada en les nocions d’assaig, pensament, reflexió i meditació. A la vegada, per mitjà de l’anàlisi de les preguntes clau que estructuren la lectura, s’exposa l’hermenèutica de la novel·la inscrita en els assaigs d’aquest autor. Finalment, gràcies a l’estudi de la recepció acadèmica dels seus textos, i de l’herència kunderiana a la revista L’Atelier du roman, es mostren les contribucions de les nocions poetològiques desenvolupades per Kundera als debats de la teoria de la novel·la.
In his essays L’art du roman, Les testaments trahis, and Le rideau, the Czech writer Milan Kundera suggests a conception of the novel as a form of knowledge of existence. This idea is based, on the one hand, on his own experience as a novelist and, on the other hand, on his interpretations of the literary work of his pléiade of authors: Hermann Broch, Robert Musil and Franz Kafka. A critical study of his idea of ‘specifical novelistic knowledge’, based on the notion of essay, meditation, reflection, and though, will be developed through the analysis of Kundera’s readings. Moreover, the analysis of the key questions that structure his readings will show the hermeneutics of the novel built in the authors essays. Finally, the study of the academic reception of his work, and the kunderian heritage of the review L’Atelier du roman will show the contributions of Kundera’s essays to the debates of the theory of the novel.

This doctoral thesis approaches literary tourism initially from an historical perspective in order to define the phenomenon through a review of the existing academic literature in the field. The forms of literary tourism are analysed to provide a typology and from this the value of literary tourism is explained both from the visitor's point of view and the destination manager's. Current theories underpinning the existing literature on literary tourism, including Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital are reviewed. To extend the current state of research and to answer the research questions a case study of successful urban literary tourism is identified, in this case in Brittany, France. The uses of French literature in literary tourism are reviewed to provide a sound basis on which to examine French texts and tourist destinations. Novel methods of field research are developed to formalise and to make reproducible the methodology for this study and for future work drawing on, and seeking to combine both literary theory and ethnography. Following a pilot study on the French Riviera the full discovery instruments are designed and applied in fieldwork on the case destination, Concarneau, using the detective novel, The Yellow Dog, which is set in Concarneau. Analysis of the findings from this provide a new contribution to the field of literary theory, in the area of reader interpellation, and answer the research questions in the form of a new set of recommendations for DMOs and tourism stakeholders. From the empirical study that used Web 2.0 social media, only available since 2013, an analysis of which novels do stimulate literary tourism is presented for the first time. Out of the research process new methods have been evolved, and are presented in the conclusion, for the DMO to synthesise and leverage digital resources. This provides DMOs with interpretation processes for its managed heritage to use with its local stakeholders in hotels and in tourism businesses. Finally, an innovative conceptualisation of what constitutes tourism knowledge is proposed.

This thesis highlights a new interpretation of the writings of Ibn Taymiyya. Previous scholarship has stressed the legalistic, social or religious aspect, often at the expense of the philosophical content of Ibn Taymiyya's works. The explanatory insight of a study on the theory of knowledge, hitherto neglected, is evidenced by its capability to demonstrate the convergence of elementary, religious, intuitive and rational principles. The theory illustrates the concerns of a synthetic mind whose attempt was to broaden and not restrict the domain of knowledge vis-a-vis the Divine. Knowledge is not man's privilege and is available to all of creation. All created entities have the capacity to know their Creator. This thesis attempts to shed light on the mechanisms of the acquisition of knowledge about the Divine in their modes of availability to the creatures and to man. Tensions of the human predicament thus participate in the logical framework of the discussion. The attempt is to define the domain of knowledge, its components, and its parameters in the quest for a perfect acquisition of knowledge.

The decision problem in set theory has been intensively investigated in the last decades, and decision procedures or proofs of undecidability have been provided for several quantified and unquantified fragments of set theory. In this thesis we study the decision problem for three novel quantified fragments of set theory, which allow the explicit manipulation of ordered pairs. We present a decision procedure for each language of this family, and prove that all of these procedures are optimal (in the sense that they run in nondeterministic polynomial-time) when restricted to formulae with quantifier nesting bounded by a constant. The expressive power of languages of this family is then measured in terms of set-theoretical constructs they allow to express. In addition, these languages can be profitably employed in knowledge representation, since they allow to express a large amount description logic constructs.

Knowledge is regarded as key resource in today’s business environment. Many researchers argue that it is the key resource to create a competitive advantage. Still, it differs itself from ordinary resources. Knowledge cannot be quantified or specified numerically to recognize the quantity of knowledge a company possesses. Furthermore, companies may lack the ability to achieve an absolute control over the supply of knowledge that will occur when trying to extract it from employees. Knowledge Management is the field which presents an approach to manage the valuable resource of accumulated knowledge. By implementing processes and actions in a company, it will obtain a control over the knowledge in the organization. This dissertation also presents diverse definitions of Knowledge Management. By investigating the components of these definitions, we see that various academic researchers recognize different notions upon Knowledge Management as theory. When reviewing theory, one could question the validity of the word management in Knowledge Management. The theory declares management as an enhancement of practices in organizational context.

The purpose of our dissertation was to investigate if theoretical Knowledge Management is a coexisted factor in companies. By looking at the elements extracted from theory, this notion became apparent. When implementing Knowledge Management, an individual company creates opportunities for people to learn and share their knowledge.

Scholars argue that knowledge is a fundamental source for retaining competitive advantage, as value creation depends fundamentally on the competence of a firm to create new knowledge (Nonaka and Toyama, 2002). Knowledge creation is based on conversion of two types of knowledge: tacit knowledge, which is constituent to the comprehensiveness of an individual’s consciousness, and explicit knowledge, which can be readily communicated. Based on the framework by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), one of the most significant and cited models, the motivation of this research is to expand knowledge creation model from intra- to inter-organizational relationships theoretically and explore supply chain knowledge creation process in practice to examine the sequences of this extension. Studying three firms in the fashion industry, this thesis contributes to research on knowledge creation by taking a socio-technological perspective through a qualitative study of supply chain management. The research findings provide support for the proposed theoretical model in which social relationships and technology interact in the knowledge creation process to diminish supply chain complexities. While many supply chain relationships I observed appear to be influential in creating knowledge, one similarity among the cases here is that the effectiveness of the knowledge creation process has been limited due to the lack of harmony in employing knowledge resources. Knowledge creation process may be superficial due to the fact that they require a large revolution in work routines regarding the use of technology. Even where there is some degree of socialization, the process is partial because of incongruities between individuals understanding and corporate supply chain strategies.

Le Management du Savoir (KM), n'est pas une nouvelle philosophie impossible à propos de la gestion des organisations, mais plutôt la somme de petites actions qui contribuent à la réussite du tout. Dans le contexte de la nouvelle économie, le KM est devenu incontournable. L'auteur le définit comme "le processus nourricier pour la survie des organisations". L'originalité de ce travail est de démontrer que le KM n'est pas forcement une thématique nouvelle qu'il faut caser à touts prix dans nos organisations. Il s'agit de prêter attention à la "Convergence liée au Savoir" ("Knowledge Convergence" KC) qui a déjà eu lieu, la plupart du temps, dans nos organisations; et non pas de créer une bulle séparée, isolante. Identifier et prendre en compte la "Convergence liée au Savoir" est une façon de commencer à pratiquer le KM. C'est identifier dans les structures établies de nos organisations, les germes de celle-ci. C'est considérer le développement organique qui a déjà eu lieu, et regrouper les efforts existants sous le parasol virtuel du KM. L'objectif est double. Il s'agit d'une part, d'enraciner ces pratiques dans la culture de l'organisation, afin d'entretenir la motivation du personnel. D'autre part, cela permet de réduire les barrières fonctionnelles entre les différents départements dans le but d'atteindre des objectifs communs, et de réaliser des tâches de plus en plus complexes. Les méthodes et pratiques du KM déployées, tiennent lieu de tactiques. Si ces pratiques convergent sous l'œil bienveillant d'une équipe pluridisciplinaire qui les coordonne, alors un nouveau savoir porteur d'avenir pourra émerger ("Knowledge Emergence"), et nous conduire à l' "Avantage Créatif"
Knowledge Management (KM) is not a new impossible philosophy about business, but more the sum of all the small actions that are contributing to the success of the whole picture. In the context of the new economy, KM becomes inevitable. The author defines it as "the process of nurturing for surviving in organizations. " The original contribution of this work is to demonstrate that KM is not a new topic that we must fit into our organizations. We rather have to pay attention to the "Knowledge Convergence" (KC), that already most of the time happens in our organizations and not to create a separate isolating bubble. Identify and take in account the KC is a way to start doing KM. This is about identifying in our established structures in organizations, its seeds. This is about the consideration of the organic development that already happened in companies and their linkage under the virtual umbrella of the already existing KM efforts. The goal is double. In one hand this is about enrooting those practices in the company culture sustaining the employees' motivation. On the other hand, it allows reducing the functional barriers between the different departments, in order to achieve common goals and perform more and more complex tasks. KM methods and practices used are tactical. If those converge (KC) under the coordination of a cross-functional team, then a new kind of knowledge could emerge (Knowledge Emergence). This then leads to the "Creative Advantage"

This thesis examines the relationship between nihilism and postmodernism in relation to the sublime, and is divided into two parts: theory and literature. Beginning with histories of nihilism and the sublime, the Enlightenment is constructed as a conflict between the two. Rather than promote a simple binarism, however, nihilism is constructed as a temporally-displaced form of sublimity that is merely labelled as nihilism because of the dominant ideologies at the time. Postmodernism, as a product of the Enlightenment, is therefore implicitly related to both nihilism and the sublime, despite the fact that it is often characterised as either nihilistic or sublime. Whereas prior forms of nihilism are 'modernist' because they seek to codify reality, postmodernism creates a new formulation of nihilism – 'postmodern nihilism' – that is itself sublime. This is explored in relation to a broad survey of postmodern literature through a series of interconnected themes. These themes – apocalypse, the absurd, absence, and space – arise from the debates presented in the theoretical chapters of this thesis, and demonstrate the ways in which nihilism and the sublime interact within postmodern literature. Because of the theoretical and literary debates presented within it, this thesis concludes that it cannot be a thesis at all.

Although research and practice agree that visions are essential for organizations, the process of vision development remains elusive in academic literature. Presenting the "theory wave", this paper proposes a knowledge-based theory for developing sustainable visions to guide the creation of measures and actions in the future. Central to the theory wave, we suggest three features that characterize the development of sustainable visions; (1) learning from an envisioned future, (2) need orientation and (3) a wavelike process combining top-down and bottom-up approaches. Furthermore, by enhancing the creation of different kinds of knowledge, the theory-wave entails aspects of research on knowledge creation and thereby, it provides a new perspective on the field of vision development.

Climate change caused by anthropogenic activity is one of the biggest challenges of our time. Researchers are striving to understand the effects of global warming on the ecological systems of the oceans, and how these ecological systems influence the global climate, a line of research that is crucial in order to counteract or adapt to the effects of global warming. A major challenge that researchers in this area are facing, is the huge amount of potentially relevant literature, as insights from widely different fields such as biology, chemistry, climatology and oceanography can prove crucial in understanding the effects of global warming on the oceans. To alleviate some of the work load from researchers, information extraction tools can be used to extract relevant information from the scientific literature automatically, and discovery support tools can be developed to assist researchers in their efforts. This master thesis conducts fundamental research into the development of discovery support tools for oceanographic climate science, focusing primarily on the information extraction component.

The problem of inferring novel knowledge from implicit facts by logically connecting independent fragments of literature is known as Literature Based Discovery (LBD). In LBD, to discover hidden links, it is important to determine the relevancy between concepts using appropriate information measures. In this study, to discover interesting and inherent links latent in large corpora, nine distinct methods, comprising variants of statistical information measures and derived semantic knowledge from domain ontology, are designed and compared. A series of experiments are performed and analyzed for those proposed methods. Also, a new strategy of effective preprocessing is proposed, which is capable of removing terms that have meager chances of constituting a new discovery. Finally, an organized list of final concepts deemed worthy of scientific investigation are provided to the user. Overall, our research presents a comprehensive analysis and perspective of how different statistical information measures and semantic knowledge affect the knowledge discovery procedure.

This thesis presents a diagnosis of the problem of luck in epistemology and an analysis of the concept of knowledge. Part I gives an account of the ordinary concept of luck. Part II gives an account of the philosophical notion of epistemic luck and develops an original account of the concept of knowledge: the control theory of knowledge
Aquesta tesi presenta un diagnòstic del problema de la sort en epistemologia i una anàlisi del concepte de coneixement. La primera part ofereix una teoria del concepte ordinari de sort. La segona part ofereix una teoria de la noció filosòfica de sort epistèmica i desenvolupa una teoria original del concepte de coneixement: la teoria del control

Zero-knowledge proof schemes are one of the main building blocks of modern cryptography. Using the Helios voting protocol as a practical example, we show mistakes in the previous understanding of these proof schemes and the resulting security problems. We proceed to define a hierarchy of security notions that solidifies our understanding of proof schemes: weak proof schemes, strong proof schemes and multi-proofs. We argue that the problems in Helios result from its use of weak proofs and show how these proofs can be made strong. We provide the first proof of ballot privacy for full Helios ballots with strong proofs. In Helios, a proof scheme commonly known as Fiat-Shamir-Schnorr is used to strengthen encryption, a construction also known as Signed E1Gamal or more generally, Encrypt+PoK. We show that in the Encrypt+PoK construction, our hierarchy of proof scheme notions corresponds naturally to a well-known hierarchy of security notions for public-key encryption: weal< proofs yield chosen-plain text secure encryption, strong proofs yield non-malleable encryption and multi-proofs yield chosen-ciphertext secure encryption. Next, we ask whether Signed E1Gamal is chosen-ciphertext secure, a question closely related but not identical to whether Fiat-Shamir-Schnorr proofs are multi-proofs. We answer both these questions negatively: under a reasonable assumption, the failure of which would cast doubt on the security of Schnorr-like proofs, we prove that Signed E1Gamal cannot be shown to be chosen-ciphertext secure by a reduction to the security of plain E1Gamal. This answers an open question, to our knowledge first asked by Shoup and Gennaro in a paper published in 1998.

It has been debated whether knowledge attributions are descriptions of the world. Descriptivists argue that they are. Non-cognitivists discover that knowledge attributions have characteristics that are not shared by paradigm cases of descriptions. Most forms of non-cognitivism therefore deny that knowledge attributions are descriptions of the world. This thesis approaches the debate using data from the ordinary use of language. It is argued that a prominent form of descriptivism, attributor contextualism, is in conflict with treating ordinary use of simple knowledge attributions as true. This treatment of ordinary language is adopted by prominent contextualists, and is what distinguishes contextualism from its main rival, invariantism. The conflict is generalized to descriptivism in general so that either descriptivism or the treatment of simple ordinary use of the language as true has to be given up. Various arguments for and against such treatment of ordinary language and descriptivism’s alternative, non-cognitivism, are examined respectively. It is held that although many forms of non-cognitivism are problematic, whether non-cognitivism is a true thesis still remains open. It is also argued that despite its initial plausibility, the treatment of simple ordinary use of indicative language as true is not as attractive as it first appears to be. Since we are not forced to accept treating simple ordinary knowledge attributions as true, as far as the conflict between the two goes, we are not forced to give up descriptivism, either. However, non-cognitivism remains an attractive alternative to descriptivism.
published_or_final_version
Philosophy
Master
Master of Philosophy

Almost no work has been done on the substance of Kierkegaard's epistemology. I argue, however, that knowledge plays a much more important role in Kierkegaard's thought than has traditionally been appreciated.
There are two basic types of knowledge, according to Kierkegaard: "objective knowledge" and "subjective knowledge." I argue that both types of knowledge are associated by Kierkegaard with "certainty" and may be defined as justified true mental representation (forestilling). I also argue, however, that the meaning of 'certainty,' 'justified' and 'true' is derivative of the object of knowledge. That is, I argue that Kierkegaard employs these expressions in both an objective and subjective sense and that the latter sense is not, as it has often been interpreted to be, subjectivist.
Finally, I argue that an appreciation of the substance of Kierkegaard's epistemology reveals that the charges of irrationalism which have often been made against him, are without foundation.

The last decade has been marked by unprecedented growth in both the production of biomedical data and the amount of published literature discussing it. Almost every known or postulated piece of information pertaining to genes, proteins, and their role in biological processes is reported somewhere in the vast amount of published biomedical literature. We believe the ability to rapidly survey and analyze this literature and extract pertinent information constitutes a necessary step toward both the design and the interpretation of any large-scale experiment. Moreover, automated literature mining offers a yet untapped opportunity to integrate many fragments of information gathered by researchers from multiple fields of expertise into a complete picture exposing the interrelated roles of various genes, proteins, and chemical reactions in cells and organisms. In this thesis, we show that functional keywords in biomedical literature, particularly Medline, represent very valuable information and can be used to discover new genomic knowledge. To validate our claim we present an investigation into text mining biomedical literature to assist microarray data analysis, yeast gene function classification, and biomedical literature categorization. We conduct following studies: 1. We test sets of genes to discover common functional keywords among them and use these keywords to cluster them into groups; 2. We show that it is possible to link genes to diseases by an expert human interpretation of the functional keywords for the genes- none of these diseases are as yet mentioned in public databases; 3. By clustering genes based on commonality of functional keywords it is possible to group genes into meaningful clusters that reveal more information about their functions, link to diseases and roles in metabolism pathways; 4. Using extracted functional keywords, we are able to demonstrate that for yeast genes, we can make a better functional grouping of genes in comparison to available public microarray and phylogenetic databases; 5. We show an application of our approach to literature classification. Using functional keywords as features, we are able to extract epidemiological abstracts automatically from Medline with higher sensitivity and accuracy than a human expert.

This dissertation is a study of what selected literature teachers report to be their sources of practical knowledge. The data for the study was collected through open-ended interviews with three practicing public school literature teachers in two school districts in a large southwestern city between 1996 and 1998. The informants were selected more on the basis of convenience of access than any other criteria, though I also considered their length of time in the profession and limited the study to persons who were actually teaching literature at the time of the study. The interviews followed an extended observation. After the interviews were transcribed, I analyzed them by the "constant comparison" method (Merriam, 1988, p. 138), using a set of data codes derived from the interview data, then sorted the data according to the codes. That permitted me to bring together pieces of conversation from various points in the interview in a way that is most useful to me (Rubin and Rubin, 1995, pp. 238--241). While the selection and data collection methods were such that I cannot extrapolate the findings to other literature teachers, the data shows quite clearly that, for these teachers, there is a disjuncture between what the research literature assumes are teachers' primary sources of practical knowledge and what the teachers themselves think it to be. Both their statements about their sources of practical knowledge and the metaphoric language they use to describe themselves argue that, for these three teachers, alternative sources of practical knowledge---self, publisher-generated materials, reading in the professional literature, conversations with colleagues, and professional conferences and staff development workshops---are more important sources of their practices than are the sources upon which the research literature puts its primary focus---the apprenticeship of observation, content courses, and pedagogy courses. This finding suggests to me that a broader, more detailed study of this question is warranted.

The purpose of this study is to find out Turkish prospective teachers' subject matter knowledge of variables and pedagogical content knowledge of variables and also the nature of the interactions between these two types of knowledge. One hundred and eighty four students participated in the study. Questionnaires were distributed to 2nd, 3rd, 4th year mathematics education faculty students of three different universities. The questionnaire included 16 fixed and open-ended questions about (a) the principal uses of variables, (b) the awareness about different roles of variables, (c) the flexibility, versatility and connectedness among the different roles and uses, and (d) ways of presenting the subject matter, (e) curriculum knowledge. As a follow-up study, ten students of different year groups who completed this questionnaire were interviewed. The outcome of this study is that prospective teachers have different perceptions of the notion of the variable which are reflected in their pedagogical content knowledge in a complex way. Results indicate that the majority of prospective teachers are successful in manipulating variables; however they have problems in moving flexibly between different meanings and representations. Concrete objects and numbers are identified as two main forms of analogies that they would use to explain ideas relating to manipulation of symbols. The results indicate that there is a complex interaction between subject matter knowledge of variables and pedagogical content knowledge which may involve the prospective teachers' own learning experiences, general pedagogical knowledge and the robustness of one type of knowledge.