What Do We Do When We Walk?

• Thesis title in Czech: Co vlastně děláme, když chodíme?
• Thesis title in English: What Do We Do When We Walk?
• Key words: situace|duchapřítomnost
• English key words: situation|present-mindedness
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2015/2016
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Institute of Philosophy and Religious Studies (21-UFAR)
• Supervisor: prof. PhDr. Karel Thein, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 23.08.2016
• Date of assignment: 23.08.2016
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 09.09.2016
• Date and time of defence: 08.09.2017 08:30
• Date of electronic submission: 06.08.2017
• Date of proceeded defence: 08.09.2017
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: prof. Mgr. Miroslav Petříček, Dr.

Guidelines

This three-part inquiry seeks to understand what we do when we walk by analyzing significant situations and styles wherein walking, as it were, shows itself (where walking is an explicit theme). Chapter One (analyzing Marching and Pilgrimage, situations of existential transformation) argues that walking is an activity that concerns and expresses one´s identity. An inquiry into walking thus becomes, in effect, an indirect inquiry into human nature. Chapter Two (analyzing Tightrope Walking and Detour, situations of mindfulness and mindlessness) explains walking as an interplay between our active part and our passive part. Chapter Three shifts the question from what to how, from substance to style, and analyzes two paradigmatic manners of walking, one for men and one for women: John Wayne´s swagger and Karlie Kloss´s moody gait. Interpretations of various texts, chosen because of their intrinsic involvedness in the given situations (military cadences and marching songs for Marching, prayers for Pilgrimage, commercials for Tightrope Walking) provide guidelines for the particular analyses and ensure their meaningfulness.

References

Balzac, Honoré de. Théorie de la démarche: et autres textes. Aix-en-Provence: Pandora, 1978.
Dunnigan, Timothy P. Modern military cadence. Alexandria, Va: Byrd Enterprises, 1997.
Ellis, Bret Easton. Glamorama. London: Picador, 1998.
Levy, Emanuel. John Wayne: Prophet of the American Way of Life. Metuchen,NJ: Scarecrow Press 1988.
Mayer, Andreas. Gradiva's Gait: Tracing the Figure of a Walking Woman. Critical Inquiry, 38/3 (2012), pp. 554-578.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Pentkovsky, Aleksei (ed.). The Pilgrim's Tale. New York: Paulist Press, 1999.