This thesis argues that the process of the transformation of the image of the female in science fiction can be classified into pre-liminality, liminality, and post-liminal reintegration. These three stages lead towards hybridity and transition, but each is characterized by different directions and relations. To demonstrate this claim, each aspect of liminality (pre- and post-) will be examined through the lens of feminist theories as they are portrayed in Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson, Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson, The Last Ride of the Glory Girls (2011) by Libba Bray, and Hand ...

The progression of cities, as Henri Lefebvre observed, can be studied as the slow spread of its heterotopic peripheries over its dominant space. This margin-to-center motion is usually accompanied by a change of the individual’s mindset, notably affecting their concepts of space, time, and identity. Thus, this thesis will trace how the cybercity—the newest addition to the urban evolution and formerly a heterotopic periphery of human life—has expanded into the dominant space of the physical city, therefore imposing its understanding of spatiality, temporality, and individuality on the contemporary ...

This thesis argues that reading Edgar Allan Poe’s “Eureka” (1848) in light of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Dionysian philosophy can reveal Poe’s shared worldview and his contribution to the postmodern age and to post-structuralist concepts of truth, genre and beauty. Each of these concepts will be examined in “Eureka” to reveal the relevance of Poe’s philosophy to ways of thinking later popularized by Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. A careful examination of major ideas discussed in “Eureka,” such as the mutability of truths, the opposition between philosophy and poetry, and the unity ...