Welcome to TUCL Repository
- Access to a vast collection of academic theses and dissertations
- Wide range of scholarly journals and articles
- Search and browse functionalities for easy discovery of resources
- Accessibility to digital resources anytime, anywhere
- Facilitates research and learning endeavors of TUCL community
- Promoting open access to knowledge and research findings
- User-friendly interface, ensuring ease of navigation and accessibility for users of all levels of expertise
- unique persistent identifier (such as DOI or Handle) to facilitate citation, tracking, and long-term preservation, ensuring the integrity and longevity of scholarly contributions
Communities in DSpace
Select a community to browse its collections.
Recent Submissions
Renegotiation of Narrative Space in Robyn Davidson’s Tracks and Sara Wheeler’s Terra Incognita: Travels In Antarctica
(2025) Timala, Raj Lakshmi; Anirudra Thapa
This thesis is founded on the premise that the genre of travel writing has
historically been seen as a masculine genre closely bound to the ideals of mobility,
conquest, and exploration that marginalises and excludes women from participation
due to socially imposed expectations of domesticity and immobility. Thus, this
androcentric framing or a genre based on a masculine ideology generates anxiety for
women travel writers, as travel writing produced by women has often been and
continues to be sidelined in travel writing scholarship. Struggling with such anxieties
and insecurities, women travel writers have constantly been on the lookout for
strategies and unique narrative techniques to combat the established societal norms.
This study explores two late twentieth-century women travel writers and their
navigation of genre and gender expectations: Robyn Davidson's Tracks (1980) and
Sara Wheeler's Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica (1996). The study thus argues
that both writers through their travel narrative engage in a renegotiation of narrative
space that exhibits how gendered anxieties complicate the boundaries of the travel
writing genre. Both authors enter territories—the Australian desert and Antarctica—
traditionally constructed as masculine domains of conquest within travel writing.
Drawing on theoretical insights from Mary Gerhart, Jacques Derrida, and Judith
Butler, I analyse how Davidson and Wheeler employ personal narrative, self-
reflexivity, and genre hybridity to establish authority within a tradition emphasising
male-coded values of objectivity and detachment. This thesis thus through Tracks and
Terra Incognita, explores the complexities that female travel writers like Davidson
and Wheeler face, and reveals how their work destabilises the traditional tropes of
exploration and redefines the boundaries of the genre of travel writing.
Echoes of Silence: Role of Cultural Attitudes in Adolescent Trauma in Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why and Naoko Yamada’s A Silent Voice
(2025) Limbu, Yzunchho; Bal Bahadur Thapa
This dissertation investigates the interplay between adolescent trauma and cultural
frameworks by examining the Western paradigm of individualism and the Eastern
paradigm of collectivism through a comparative analysis of Jay Asher’s novel 13
Reasons Why and Naoko Yamada’s animated movie A Silent Voice. The adolescents
depicted in 13 Reasons Why and A Silent Voice come from a culturally distinct
backgrounds, one rooted in individualism and the other in collectivism. However,
their voices are similarly silenced by social structures, cultural expectations, and
institutional failures, raising critical questions about how adolescent trauma is shaped
and suppressed across different cultural contexts. Centering on Cathy Caruth’s trauma
theory, particularly focusing her emphasis on belatedness and the necessity of
acknowledgement, the study interrogates how trauma is voiced and silenced in
narratives about adolescents. The research further draws on the theories of Jeffrey C.
Alexander and Ron Eyerman to contextualize adolescent psychological responses and
social roles within their respective cultural frameworks. The study reveals how the
Western narrative privileges self-expression and vocal autonomy, as seen through
Hannah Baker’s posthumous tapes, whereas the Eastern narrative prioritizes group
harmony and silent endurance as illustrated by Shoya and Shoko’s reticence. By
analyzing the motif of silence versus voice, the research highlights how cultural
norms either inhibit or enable trauma expression and recovery. This qualitative study
incorporates close analysis, with attention to guilt, shame, institutional complicity,
and the redemptive potential of listening and acknowledgement. This research
contributes to trauma studies by foregrounding adolescence as a culturally sensitive
and under-theorized site of trauma articulation.
Keywords: Adolescence, trauma, culture, silence, voice, individualism, collectivism
Irony of Colonialism in Herbert George Wells' The War of the World
(2025) Mukhiya, Pradeep; Maheshwor Paudel
This research analyses the forces of conflict, violence, destruction, technology
as domination, vulnerability, moral contradiction of empire, and psychology of
colonized people in H.G. Well’ The War of the Worlds. Wells echoes Martians as all
dark and savage replications of brutal European colonizers and chaotic narratives
related to cultural hegemony and domination over and subjugation of indigenous
populations. So the study engages with the issues around irony of colonialism such as
alien(Martians) invasion on Earth, reverse colonization, dominant imperial power
and politics, use of advance technology, and dehumanization of that contemporary
time and Wells stands as a witness of these all issues in his novel. This research also
examines power dynamics, ecological aspects, apocalyptic scenario, hypocrisy of
colonialism and existence of alien. The study employs theoretical insights related to
post-colonialism particularly discussed by Frantz Fanon and Edward Said. The main
aim of this research is to seek the issues of irony in the novel, applying the post-
colonial lens. This research finally concludes that Wells’ novel uncovers the moral
and symbolic ironies within the text, challenging the justification of colonial violence,
depicting the psychological state of colonized population, showing the rise and fall of
power, moral failures of empire and exposing the fragility of imperial power when
roles are reversed.
Keywords: Martians, irony, conflict, violence, destruction, technology, imperialism,
power, alien