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- Creators: Arizona State University
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Modern media meant for light consumption tends to lean heavily on tropes and assumptions that don't really exist in literary fiction. Authors writing today are aware of this manner of reading and often tailor their messages to it. However, the framework doesn't really work for older novels. They were not written for this modern lens, and therefore, make their criticisms in ways that modern readers might not understand. So what does this mean for modern readings of these books, modern adaptations of these stories, or even modern original stories set in these time periods? This thesis explores these questions through perusing Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jane Austen's Persuasion and the 2022 Netflix adaptation of such, and the first season of Netflix's Bridgerton.
ContributorsKhalsa, James (Author) / Soares, Rebecca (Thesis director) / Fette, Donald (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Computer Science and Engineering Program (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines contemporary U.S. women writing about war, with primarily women subjects and protagonists, from 1991-2013, in fiction, memoir, and media. The writers situate women at the center of war texts and privilege their voices as authoritative speakers in war, whether as civilians and soldiers trying to survive or indigenous women preparing for the possibility of war. I argue that these authors are rewriting scripts of war to reflect gendered experiences and opening new ways of thinking about war. Women Rewriting Scripts of War argues that Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead juxtaposes an indigenous Story concept against a white industrialized national “Truth,” and indigenous women characters will resort to war if needed to oppose it. Silko’s and the other texts here challenge readers to unseat assumptions about the sovereignty of the U.S. and other countries, about the fixedness of gender, of capitalism, and of how humans relate to each other‒and how we should. I argue in Essay 3 that the script of “the body” or “the soldier” in military service can be expanded by moving toward language and concepts from feminist and queer theory and spectrums of gender and sexuality. This can contribute to positive change for all military members. In each of the texts, there are some similarities in connections with others. Connections enable solidarity for change, possibilities for healing, and survival; indeed, without connections with others to work together, survival is not possible. Changes to established economic structures become necessary for women in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible; I argue that women engaging in alternative modes of economy subvert the dominant economic constraints, gender hierarchies, and social isolation during and after war in the Congo. In Essay 5, I explore two fictional texts about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Helen Benedict's novel Sand Queen and Katey Schultz’s short story collection Flashes of War. The connections in these women’s texts about war are not idealized, and they function as the antithesis to the fragmentation and isolation of postmodern texts.
This dissertation examines contemporary U.S. women writing about war, with primarily women subjects and protagonists, from 1991-2013, in fiction, memoir, and media. The writers situate women at the center of war texts and privilege their voices as authoritative speakers in war, whether as civilians and soldiers trying to survive or indigenous women preparing for the possibility of war. I argue that these authors are rewriting scripts of war to reflect gendered experiences and opening new ways of thinking about war. Women Rewriting Scripts of War argues that Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Almanac of the Dead juxtaposes an indigenous Story concept against a white industrialized national “Truth,” and indigenous women characters will resort to war if needed to oppose it. Silko’s and the other texts here challenge readers to unseat assumptions about the sovereignty of the U.S. and other countries, about the fixedness of gender, of capitalism, and of how humans relate to each other‒and how we should. I argue in Essay 3 that the script of “the body” or “the soldier” in military service can be expanded by moving toward language and concepts from feminist and queer theory and spectrums of gender and sexuality. This can contribute to positive change for all military members. In each of the texts, there are some similarities in connections with others. Connections enable solidarity for change, possibilities for healing, and survival; indeed, without connections with others to work together, survival is not possible. Changes to established economic structures become necessary for women in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel The Poisonwood Bible; I argue that women engaging in alternative modes of economy subvert the dominant economic constraints, gender hierarchies, and social isolation during and after war in the Congo. In Essay 5, I explore two fictional texts about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Helen Benedict's novel Sand Queen and Katey Schultz’s short story collection Flashes of War. The connections in these women’s texts about war are not idealized, and they function as the antithesis to the fragmentation and isolation of postmodern texts.
ContributorsStamper, Cambria A (Author) / Clarke, Deborah (Thesis advisor) / Hogue, Cynthia (Committee member) / Fonow, Mary Margaret (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
DescriptionThe stories in this document are only loosely related thematically. They cohere instead by way of other mechanisms. They are often the products of significant formal experimentation. They are an attempt to privilege mystery and asymmetricality over causality and shapeliness.
ContributorsCorbin, Kent (Author) / Turchi, Peter (Thesis advisor) / Ison, Tara (Committee member) / Mcnally, T.M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This paper utilizes insights from emerging monster theory, particularly the idea that monsters are cultural representations, to examine the representation of the Gyant and the figure Talus in Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. The thesis posits that contrary to most critical readings, the episode concerning the Gyant focuses on a portion of the 16th century English Cultural Body-the peasants, rather than the Irish or another cultural subgroup. The thesis also argues that through the application of monster theory, the complicated political sympathies of the author towards the English lower class emerge, and the English third estate gains a voice.
ContributorsTurney, Brittany (Author) / Fox, Cora (Thesis advisor) / Holbo, Christine (Committee member) / Corse, Taylor (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The popularity that regional Mexican music has achieved in the last years is impressive. The population increase of Mexican nationals in the United States and the availability to share information via web has increased the popularity of the musical genre, specially the subgenres of música norteña and banda. Regarless of the low economic class that is associated with the subgenres of música norteña and banda, nowadays they are a fundamental asset in the music industry, impart to the high volume of sales and popularity. However, even with a high index of popularity at a multinational level, the world of música grupera, how is categorized for subgenres of banda, música norteña, conjunto and duranguense, there is a low number of feminine artist that participate. The participation of women in the gupera world is very scarce, due to the patriarchal hegemony and machismo that spreads through the subgenres. Because of the low participation of women in the subgenres, they get classified the passive voice. The absence of a strong female representation has caused the expansion of a machista message though the songs implemented in the regional Mexican music. This phenomenon can be clearly appreciated in the songs "El carrito" (n.d.). "Disfruté engañarte" (2013), "La fory fay" (2013) and "Soy un desmadre" (2014). Using the ideology of power of Michel Foucault and complemented with the feminism of Hélène Cixious, the analysis and identification of the marginalized women in this examples can be reached. However, even though there are a low number of feminine artists that participate in the subgenres of música norteña and banda, their success has achieved the distortion of the hegemonic barrier imposed on society. Artist like Jenni Rivera and Los Horóscopos de Durango are some of the few artist that have distorted this socio and cultural hegemony that preexist in regional Mexican music. With the success of their songs, they have created a space of feminine expression against the machista message that marginalizes women, and opens new doors of opportunities for others. All this efforts have the intent to create equality of power in the sphere of regional Mexican music.
ContributorsCórdova, Martín (Author) / Hernández-G., Manuel J (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Garcia-Fernandez, Carlos J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
The rise of print book culture in sixteenth-century England had profound effects on understandings of identity that are reflected in the prose, poetry, and drama of the age. Drawing on assemblage and actor-network theory, this dissertation argues that models of identity constructed in relation to books in Renaissance England are neither static nor self-contained, arising instead out of a collaborative engagement with books as physical objects that tap into historically specific cultural discourses. Renaissance representations of book usage blur the boundary between human beings and their books, both as textual carriers and as physical artifacts.
The first chapter outlines the relationship between book history and assemblage theory to examine how books contribute to the assembly of the human subject in different ways for readers, owners, and authors and to lay a theoretical and historical foundation for reading cultural assemblages in later chapters. The second chapter studies how authors and sometimes printers attempt as makers of books to construct public identities through them. The chapter focuses on how Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender and Isabella Whitney’s poetry anthologies play with texts and paratexts in order to create the illusion of control over the resulting authorial persona, even while acknowledging that the book itself is a deterritorialized element of their own identities with particular agencies of its own. The third chapter investigates how Renaissance drama represents human beings using books to curate their identity assemblages both publicly and inwardly, particularly as depicted in the work of Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, and the author of Arden of Faversham. The successes and failures of these assemblages on the stage reflect anxieties about the book as an agentive object in an assembled identity. The fourth chapter examines the prose work of Philip Sidney, Roger Ascham, and Fulke Greville, considering the obsession with travel books and writing as a reflection of wider notions about the permeability and possible contamination by foreign influences of the self constructed through books and writings related to travel.
The first chapter outlines the relationship between book history and assemblage theory to examine how books contribute to the assembly of the human subject in different ways for readers, owners, and authors and to lay a theoretical and historical foundation for reading cultural assemblages in later chapters. The second chapter studies how authors and sometimes printers attempt as makers of books to construct public identities through them. The chapter focuses on how Edmund Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender and Isabella Whitney’s poetry anthologies play with texts and paratexts in order to create the illusion of control over the resulting authorial persona, even while acknowledging that the book itself is a deterritorialized element of their own identities with particular agencies of its own. The third chapter investigates how Renaissance drama represents human beings using books to curate their identity assemblages both publicly and inwardly, particularly as depicted in the work of Thomas Kyd, William Shakespeare, and the author of Arden of Faversham. The successes and failures of these assemblages on the stage reflect anxieties about the book as an agentive object in an assembled identity. The fourth chapter examines the prose work of Philip Sidney, Roger Ascham, and Fulke Greville, considering the obsession with travel books and writing as a reflection of wider notions about the permeability and possible contamination by foreign influences of the self constructed through books and writings related to travel.
ContributorsAdams, John Henry (Author) / Fox, Cora (Thesis advisor) / Moulton, Ian F (Committee member) / Ryner, Bradley D. (Committee member) / Irish, Bradley J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Anchored to the Mexican-American and U.S. Latino historical experience, this dissertation examines how a Latino and Chicano Canibalia manifests itself in literary and cultural production across the different literary periods of the Southwest and the United States as formulated by Luis Leal and Ilan Stavans: Colonization: 1537-1810, Annexations: 1811-1898, Acculturation: 1898-1945, Upheaval: 1946-1979, and the fifth period, Into the Mainstream: 1980-Present. Theoretically, the study is primarily based on the work Canibalia: canibalismo, calibanismo, antropofagia cultural y consumo en América Latina (2005) by Carlos Jauregui. This Canibalia claims that the symbol Caliban, a character taken from the drama The Tempest (1611) by William Shakespeare and interpreted in Calibán (1971) by Roberto Fernández Retamar, is an indispensable reference that, today, links the discourse on Colonial Studies in Latin America and, for us, also in the Mexican-American Southwest. To particularize Jáuregui’s critical perspective, we draw from the work The Dialectics of Our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History (1990) by José David Saldívar, whose call for a School of Caliban not only brings together all subaltern subject positions but marks the value of the “schooling” such an institution will provide. For Saldívar, Chicano and U.S. Latino scholarship needs to be incorporated into Caliban Studies due to a shared anti-imperial resistance. We also rely on the theoretical work Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (2000) by Walter Mignolo, which links colonial difference to border thinking and examines contemporary dialogues on Orientalism, Occidentalism, and post-Occidentalism with regards to Latin American, Chicano, and U.S. Latino cultures. Our study interprets such works as I Am Joaquín (1967) by Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, the performances of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, the novels Peregrinos de Aztlán (1974) by Miguel Méndez and Entre la sed y el desierto (2004) by Óscar L. Cordero, US Latino films like Balseros (2002) and Which Way Home (2009), the Mexican film Acorazado (2010), and Chicano and US Latino poetry that features the literary symbol examined under our critical approach; in turn, we have learned that the Chicano and Latino Canibalia is a collection of cannibal discourses which have as an objective stereotyping civilians of Mexican and Latin American descent in the United States. Our critical discourse provides an understanding of today’s complex cultural ties between all countries. A Chicano and Latino Canibalia serves as a bridge of understanding regarding the discursive silences in the history of the United States and Latin America as well as the world.
[TEXT IN SPANISH.]
ABSTRACTO
Anclada a la experiencia histórica mexicoamericana y eulatina, esta disertación examina cómo se manifiesta la Canibalia chicana y eulatina en su producción literaria y cultural de las distintas épocas del Sudoeste como diseñadas por Luis Leal y Ilan Stavans: la Colonización: 1537-1810, las Anexiones: 1811-1898, las Aculturaciones: 1898-1945, la Turbulencia: 1946-1979 y el quinto periodo, Hacia la corriente cultural dominante: 1980-Presente. Se fundamenta en la obra teórica Canibalia: canibalismo, calibanismo, antropofagia cultural y consumo en América Latina (2005) de Carlos Jáuregui. Esta Canibalia afirma que el personaje simbólico Caliban, tomado de la obra The Tempest (1611) de William Shakespeare e interpretado en el ensayo Calibán (1971) de Roberto Fernández Retamar, es un referente indispensable que hoy en día conecta los horizontes de los estudios de la colonialidad en América Latina y, para nosotros, en el Sudoeste de los Estados Unidos. Para profundizar la perspectiva crítica de Jáuregui, se acude el trabajo The Dialectics of Our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History (1990) de José David Saldívar, cuyo llamado por una School of Caliban reúne no sólo las posiciones de los sujetos subalternos, sino que nos acerca a entender la schooling o escolarización sobre lo que significa su resistencia. Para Saldívar, la lucha chicana y eulatina se incorpora a los estudios calibánicos de resistencia anti-imperial. También, nos apoyamos en el trabajo Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (2000) de Walter Mignolo, el cual liga la diferencia colonial con el pensamiento fronterizo y explica los diálogos contemporáneos alrededor del orientalismo, el occidentalismo y el post-occidentalismo con respecto a las culturas latinoamericana, chicana y eulatina. Nuestro estudio se ha enfocado en los trabajos Yo soy Joaquín (1967) de Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, las performances de Guillermo Gómez-Peña, las novelas Peregrinos de Aztlán (1974) de Miguel Méndez y Entre la sed y el desierto de Óscar L. Cordero, filmes eulatinos como Balseros (2002) and Which Way Home (2009), la película mexicana Acorazado (2010) y la producción de la poesía chicana y eulatina con el símbolo examinado bajo dicho enfoque crítico; como resultado, hemos aprendido que la Canibalia chicana y eulatina es un conjunto de discursos caníbales los cuales tienen por objetivo estereotipar a los ciudadanos estadounidenses de origen mexicano y latinoamericano en los Estados Unidos. Se trata de una nueva forma de entender los complicados lazos culturales que unen a los países de hoy en día. La Canibalia chicana y eulatina es el puente que conduce al entendimiento de los vacíos discursivos de la historia de los Estados Unidos y América Latina así como el mundo.
[TEXT IN SPANISH.]
ABSTRACTO
Anclada a la experiencia histórica mexicoamericana y eulatina, esta disertación examina cómo se manifiesta la Canibalia chicana y eulatina en su producción literaria y cultural de las distintas épocas del Sudoeste como diseñadas por Luis Leal y Ilan Stavans: la Colonización: 1537-1810, las Anexiones: 1811-1898, las Aculturaciones: 1898-1945, la Turbulencia: 1946-1979 y el quinto periodo, Hacia la corriente cultural dominante: 1980-Presente. Se fundamenta en la obra teórica Canibalia: canibalismo, calibanismo, antropofagia cultural y consumo en América Latina (2005) de Carlos Jáuregui. Esta Canibalia afirma que el personaje simbólico Caliban, tomado de la obra The Tempest (1611) de William Shakespeare e interpretado en el ensayo Calibán (1971) de Roberto Fernández Retamar, es un referente indispensable que hoy en día conecta los horizontes de los estudios de la colonialidad en América Latina y, para nosotros, en el Sudoeste de los Estados Unidos. Para profundizar la perspectiva crítica de Jáuregui, se acude el trabajo The Dialectics of Our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History (1990) de José David Saldívar, cuyo llamado por una School of Caliban reúne no sólo las posiciones de los sujetos subalternos, sino que nos acerca a entender la schooling o escolarización sobre lo que significa su resistencia. Para Saldívar, la lucha chicana y eulatina se incorpora a los estudios calibánicos de resistencia anti-imperial. También, nos apoyamos en el trabajo Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (2000) de Walter Mignolo, el cual liga la diferencia colonial con el pensamiento fronterizo y explica los diálogos contemporáneos alrededor del orientalismo, el occidentalismo y el post-occidentalismo con respecto a las culturas latinoamericana, chicana y eulatina. Nuestro estudio se ha enfocado en los trabajos Yo soy Joaquín (1967) de Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales, las performances de Guillermo Gómez-Peña, las novelas Peregrinos de Aztlán (1974) de Miguel Méndez y Entre la sed y el desierto de Óscar L. Cordero, filmes eulatinos como Balseros (2002) and Which Way Home (2009), la película mexicana Acorazado (2010) y la producción de la poesía chicana y eulatina con el símbolo examinado bajo dicho enfoque crítico; como resultado, hemos aprendido que la Canibalia chicana y eulatina es un conjunto de discursos caníbales los cuales tienen por objetivo estereotipar a los ciudadanos estadounidenses de origen mexicano y latinoamericano en los Estados Unidos. Se trata de una nueva forma de entender los complicados lazos culturales que unen a los países de hoy en día. La Canibalia chicana y eulatina es el puente que conduce al entendimiento de los vacíos discursivos de la historia de los Estados Unidos y América Latina así como el mundo.
ContributorsRamos Rodríguez, Tomás (Author) / Hernández-G., Manuel De Jesús (Thesis advisor) / Rosales, Jesus (Committee member) / Foster, David William (Committee member) / García-Fernández, Carlos Javier (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Scientific and Cultural Interpretations of Volcanoes, 1766-1901 analyzes nineteenth-century conceptions of volcanoes through interdisciplinary literature and science studies. The project considers how people in the nineteenth century used science, aesthetics, and other ways of knowing to understand volcanoes and their operations. In the mid-eighteenth century, volcanoes were seen as singular, unique features of the planet that lacked temporal and terrestrial reach. By the end of the nineteenth century, volcanoes were seen as networked, environmental phenomena that stretched through geological time and geographic space. Scientific and Cultural Interpretations of Volcanoes, 1766-1901 offers a new historical understanding of volcanoes and their environmental connections, using literature and science to show how perceptions of volcanic time and space changed over 135 years.
The first chapter, using texts by Sir William Hamilton, Hester Piozzi, and Priscilla Wakefield, argues that in the late eighteenth century important aspects of volcanoes, like their impact upon human life and their existence through time, were beginning to be defined in texts ranging from the scientific to the educational. The second chapter focuses on works by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Charles Lyell to demonstrate the ways that volcanoes were stripped of metaphysical or symbolic meaning as the nineteenth century progressed. The third chapter contrasts the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa with Constance Gordon-Cumming’s travels to Kīlauea. The chapter shows how even towards the end of the century, trying to connect human minds with the process of volcanic phenomenon was a substantial challenge, but that volcanoes like Kīlauea allowed for new conceptions of volcanic action. The last chapter, through a post-apocalyptic novel by M. P. Shiel, shows how volcanoes were finally beginning to be categorized as a primary agent within the environment, shaping all life including humanity. Ultimately, I argue that the change in thinking about volcanoes parallels today’s shift in thinking about global climate change. My work provides insight into how we imagine ecological catastrophes like volcanic eruptions or climate change in the past and present and what that means for their impact on people.
The first chapter, using texts by Sir William Hamilton, Hester Piozzi, and Priscilla Wakefield, argues that in the late eighteenth century important aspects of volcanoes, like their impact upon human life and their existence through time, were beginning to be defined in texts ranging from the scientific to the educational. The second chapter focuses on works by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Charles Lyell to demonstrate the ways that volcanoes were stripped of metaphysical or symbolic meaning as the nineteenth century progressed. The third chapter contrasts the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa with Constance Gordon-Cumming’s travels to Kīlauea. The chapter shows how even towards the end of the century, trying to connect human minds with the process of volcanic phenomenon was a substantial challenge, but that volcanoes like Kīlauea allowed for new conceptions of volcanic action. The last chapter, through a post-apocalyptic novel by M. P. Shiel, shows how volcanoes were finally beginning to be categorized as a primary agent within the environment, shaping all life including humanity. Ultimately, I argue that the change in thinking about volcanoes parallels today’s shift in thinking about global climate change. My work provides insight into how we imagine ecological catastrophes like volcanic eruptions or climate change in the past and present and what that means for their impact on people.
ContributorsLinthicum, Kent Robert (Author) / Lussier, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Bivona, Daniel (Committee member) / Looser, Devoney (Committee member) / Tromp, Marlene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the history of emotions has engaged much scholarly interest. This project draws from the historical, sociological and philosophical research on emotions to analyze the representation of emotions in narratives from Argentina and Chile. This historical investigation posits that socio-political, cultural and economic forces, which are represented in literature and film, shape emotions and emotional standards. The analysis of Rayuela (1963) by Julio Cortázar and Raúl Ruiz’s Tres Tristes Tigres (1968) is centered on the impact of Existentialism, capitalism and modernity on the construction of emotional standards in urban societies. The impact of militant groups in the shaping of collective emotions in Latin America during the 1960s and 70s is examined in Reina Roffé’s novel Monte de Venus (1973) and Aldo Francia’s film Ya no basta con rezar (1972). The analysis of Alberto Fuguet’s Las películas de mi vida (2002) and Pablo Larraín’s No (2012) sheds light on the paradigmatic shift in the construction of emotional standards resulting from the implementation of neoliberalism through dictatorships as well as the insertion into the globalized consumerist culture by way of technology and media. Finally, this project encourages future research of the emotions in literary and cultural studies of Latin America.
ContributorsBondi, Erika (Author) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Gil-Osle, Juan Pablo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
This dissertation is both creative and scholarly, engaging in the technique of "narrative scholarship," an increasingly accepted technique within the field of ecocriticism. The project is framed by my experiences with Spanish and Latino actors as well as activists involved with the 15-M movement in and around Madrid. It takes a "material ecocritical" approach, which is to say that it treats minds, spirits and language as necessarily "bodied" entities, and creates an absolute union between beings and the matter that constructs them as well as their habitat. I apply the lens of Jesper Hoffmeyer's Biosemiotics, which claims that life is at its most essential levels a communicative process. In other words, I will explore how "all matter is 'storied' matter," as well as how the "semiosphere," which is an important concept in biosmiotics, signaling a semiotic environment that predicts and defines all biological bodies/life, the human, the plant and the animal as beings who are made of and involved in semiotic activity, can serve as a basis for union amongst all bodies and provide a model of cooperation rooted in "storytelling." My project aims to embody what Wendy Wheeler describes as ecocriticism's, "syntheses between the sciences and the humanities" It is my strong opinion that creative writing has the power to offer the general public insight into the reasons why new research in biosemiotics is so important to the work that activists are doing to raise awareness of how humans can live responsibly on the only planet that is our home. This will help readers of creative writing and cultural studies scholars understand why they ought to embrace science, especially in literary and cultural studies, as a path to better understanding of the role of the humanities in an increasingly scientifically oriented world.
ContributorsDay, Timothy (Author) / Adamson, Joni (Thesis advisor) / Gutkind, Lee (Committee member) / Flys-Junquera, Carmen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016