title: From the Unknowing to the Sexualised Subject: The Development of Childhood Sexuality within the Modernist Era through the works of Henry James, Anais Nin, and Vladimir Nabokov.

authors: Jackson, Shaynah

subjects: modernism

abstract: Through the works of Henry James, Anais Nin and Vladimir Nabokov, this project shows how the modernist child develops from the unknowing to the sexualised subject. 
It begins with Henry James’s proto-modernist conceptualisation of children as unknowable: childhood cannot be represented with any certainty because children lack the means to represent themselves. They are objects within discourse, but, in James, their status as subjects is epistemologically ambiguous.  This unknowable child foreshadows the modernist reimagining of childhood sexuality. Chapter Two turns to Anais Nin, whose relationship to Freudian psychoanalysis underscores her vision of childhood.  She articulates that vision through a series of short stories in which childhood becomes increasingly estranged from the familiar symbol of innocence, and trends toward its perverse sexualisation. Chapter Three demonstrates the dangers of childhood as a blank conceptual space in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.  In her departure from innocence, the late modernist child find herself re-embodied as a sexual fantasy for the adult gaze. 
This thesis considers representations of childhood that treat children as conceptual spaces rather than as human subjects. The narrative production of silent children who present no challenge to the imposition of adult desire simultaneously produces adults with an unchecked prerogative to inform the terms of childhood. The premise of the sexualized child was then, as it is now, an alarming cultural force.

text: From the Unknowing to the Sexualised Subject: The Development of Childhood Sexuality within the Modernist Era through the works of Henry James, Anais Nin, and Vladimir Nabokov. Through the works of Henry James, Anais Nin and Vladimir Nabokov, this project shows how the modernist child develops from the unknowing to the sexualised subject. 
It begins with Henry James’s proto-modernist conceptualisation of children as unknowable: childhood cannot be represented with any certainty because children lack the means to represent themselves. They are objects within discourse, but, in James, their status as subjects is epistemologically ambiguous.  This unknowable child foreshadows the modernist reimagining of childhood sexuality. Chapter Two turns to Anais Nin, whose relationship to Freudian psychoanalysis underscores her vision of childhood.  She articulates that vision through a series of short stories in which childhood becomes increasingly estranged from the familiar symbol of innocence, and trends toward its perverse sexualisation. Chapter Three demonstrates the dangers of childhood as a blank conceptual space in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.  In her departure from innocence, the late modernist child find herself re-embodied as a sexual fantasy for the adult gaze. 
This thesis considers representations of childhood that treat children as conceptual spaces rather than as human subjects. The narrative production of silent children who present no challenge to the imposition of adult desire simultaneously produces adults with an unchecked prerogative to inform the terms of childhood. The premise of the sexualized child was then, as it is now, an alarming cultural force.

year: 2016

title: "We’re like the sex CPR dummies”: Young women’s understandings of (hetero)sexual pleasure in university accommodation

authors: Brown, Juliana

subjects: (hetero)sex

abstract: In this article, we explore the discourses that affect young women’s experiences of (hetero)sexual pleasure, drawing on data from focus groups with young women and young men who lived within a university residential setting in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Here we focus on the gendered understandings among the participants that prioritise men’s sexual pleasure and largely position women as the means of achieving that pleasure. The young women spoke of multiple barriers to gaining equality during (hetero)sexual experiences, with key issues being the coital imperative and women’s supposed sexual passivity. In challenging these barriers, the young women described various tactics used to resist their subordinate position. However, the women often placed the onus of responsibility for dismantling these barriers on themselves, thus bearing the burden of responsibility for not only young men’s sexual pleasure but also their own.

text: "We’re like the sex CPR dummies”: Young women’s understandings of (hetero)sexual pleasure in university accommodation In this article, we explore the discourses that affect young women’s experiences of (hetero)sexual pleasure, drawing on data from focus groups with young women and young men who lived within a university residential setting in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Here we focus on the gendered understandings among the participants that prioritise men’s sexual pleasure and largely position women as the means of achieving that pleasure. The young women spoke of multiple barriers to gaining equality during (hetero)sexual experiences, with key issues being the coital imperative and women’s supposed sexual passivity. In challenging these barriers, the young women described various tactics used to resist their subordinate position. However, the women often placed the onus of responsibility for dismantling these barriers on themselves, thus bearing the burden of responsibility for not only young men’s sexual pleasure but also their own.

year: 2017

title: Te Arawa – Kaitiaki of the Rotorua Te Arawa Lakes

authors: Curtis, Sir Toby

abstract: I start this morning by reciting what we call a patere talking about Te Arawa's interest and relationship to the lakes and the water. Matawhaura is our mountain on Lake Rotoiti. When I went to school in Auckland we travelled on the New Zealand Road Service
transport bus, returning for the holidays along the Mamaku ranges. Those that came from Lake Rotoiti always looked out to see the lake and the mountain Matawhaura. As soon as we saw it a little touch of emotion welled up in our hearts. Mataatua people living in Whakatane felt the same thing when they travelled back home, descending the Rotoma hill, they looked out for Putauaki (Mt Edgecumbe). It gave them the same feeling of emotion.

text: Te Arawa – Kaitiaki of the Rotorua Te Arawa Lakes I start this morning by reciting what we call a patere talking about Te Arawa's interest and relationship to the lakes and the water. Matawhaura is our mountain on Lake Rotoiti. When I went to school in Auckland we travelled on the New Zealand Road Service
transport bus, returning for the holidays along the Mamaku ranges. Those that came from Lake Rotoiti always looked out to see the lake and the mountain Matawhaura. As soon as we saw it a little touch of emotion welled up in our hearts. Mataatua people living in Whakatane felt the same thing when they travelled back home, descending the Rotoma hill, they looked out for Putauaki (Mt Edgecumbe). It gave them the same feeling of emotion.

year: 2017