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This mixed method, grounded theory study aimed to explore access to Master's level study at Rhodes University, a small, traditional South African university established in 1904, over the ten year period 1999-2008. It also sought to capture the essence of 'postgraduate readiness': the generic (non-certificated) attributes which academics expect graduates to possess in order to undertake Master's degree study. While the majority of students enter Master's level via the formal route (which at Rhodes is an Honours or 4-year bachelor's degree), a significant number are admitted based on the recognition of prior learning (RPL), a practice which is encouraged in South African higher education national policy as a means of widening access and also of acknowledging that learning can take place in ways other than 'formally'. The findings show that while RPL is well defined nationally at the undergraduate level, the concept of RPL at the postgraduate level is vague and largely left to institutional discretion. No national, and few institutional, guidelines are available on which to base the assessment of potential Master's degree students who do not have Honours degrees. Interviews with Deans, supervisors and policy makers at Rhodes indicated that while there is institutional support for admitting alternative access candidates, there is a general perception of deficit compared to those entering the Master's with formal qualifications. However, the statistical findings showed no significant difference in success rates or time taken to completion between students with and without Honours degrees. In addition, comments from supervisors with extensive experience of alternative access students praised the diversity and rich life experience which such students brought to their studies and their peers. The study concludes that an institutional culture characterized by resistance to change, risk and externally imposed regulations at Rhodes has resulted in weak implementation of the University's RPL policy, little marketing or publicizing of alternative access routes to postgraduate study, and low numbers of RPL enrolments at the Master's level. A framework for the assessment of potential Master's candidates - both RPL and formal admissions - for use at Rhodes University and potentially also at other higher education institutions, is proposed in conclusion.

Introduction: Studies reveal differential cognitive effects of alcohol use, with moderate to heavy alcohol having some beneficial effects in older adults, whereas in young adulthood, heavier alcohol use produces deficits. The aim of the research was to investigate the relationship between patterns of alcohol use and the cognitive and symptomatic functioning of university students over one year, and to discern which demographic, clinical and alcohol factors might moderate cognitive outcomes. Method: The sample included undergraduate Psychology students from a South African University, aged 18 to 23 years (n = 86). The sample was divided into two alcohol use groups based on four categories from the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) (Babor et al., 2001), including a lighter drinking group (Safe/Hazardous, n = 74) and a heavier drinking group (Harmful/Dependent, n = 12). The two drinking groups were statistically equivalent for distribution of age, gender, English first language, race groups, history of neurological or psychiatric vulnerability, a measure of initial intelligence/cognitive reserve (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test: PPVT-4) (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) and for a measure of test-taking validity (Immediate Postconcussion Assessment and Cognitive Test: ImPACT Impulse Control) (p = < 0.05 in all instances). Participants were tested on the computerized ImPACT battery (ImPACT, 2007) at three intervals over an academic year (May, August, October 2012). Repeated measures ANOVAs were used to investigate cognitive and symptomatic differences between the two alcohol use groups, in association with moderating factors. Results: The heavier drinking group revealed: (i) poorer performance on ImPACT Visual Motor Speed, Reaction Time and Cognitive Efficiency Index scores, including less ability to benefit from practice over time; (ii) symptom reports of severe Numbness/Tingling, Balance problems and Dizziness. Deleterious cognitive outcome was exacerbated by longer lifetime duration of alcohol use, passing out monthly, beer or wine drinking, smoking or substance use. Conclusion: Deleterious cognitive and symptomatic effects of heavy alcohol use are in evidence for undergraduate university students implicating current and/or cumulative alcohol induced brain impairment. The results of the study are of concern for optimal academic performance of students at an early stage of university level study, who engage in heavier (Harmful/Dependent) drinking patterns, with negative implications for future career attainment.

Questions of the dominance of cultures of whiteness are pre-imminent issues in historically white South African universities. Even when historically white universities – such as Rhodes University, the site of study for this thesis – have a predominantly black student body post 1994, there are still reports of students experiencing such institutions as alienating and excluding due to the privileging of whiteness. This thesis draws on the significant role played by discourse in how the world is constructed and reconstructed, to better understand how whiteness may continue to be produced and reproduced in everyday interactions at a historically white South African university, and how some students may feel less at home than others within such institutions. The thesis seeks to answer the following research question: what discursive strategies do Rhodes University students use to describe their raced experiences, and what role do these strategies play in either reinforcing and or challenging a culture of whiteness? The thesis engages with and is informed by literature on whiteness as constitutive of both social aspects and phenotypical essence. Drawing primarily from discourse analysis tools, and from interviews with Rhodes University students completed between 2014 and 2015, the thesis argues that whiteness is far from being a zero-sum game of winners and losers. Rather, there are gradations of whiteness where speakers draw upon whatever capital (social, phenotypical or a combination of both) to attain the best possible outcome for themselves. The thesis therefore takes seriously the idea that whiteness is a social construct which can, through socialisation be acquired, lost and, in some cases, decanted partially into other vessels. Whiteness, the thesis argues, is ever incomplete and subject to change as the context changes in order to ensure that it remains associated with privilege, opportunity and power. If whiteness is not limited to white bodies only, as suggested by both the data and literature review, then it must be studied in relation to blackness as well. The interactional, inter-relational and inter-racial construction and use of whiteness both methodologically and conceptually is one of the key contributions to the field of whiteness studies made by this thesis. This open-ended, permanent work in progress approach to whiteness can be the beginning of conversations about race that are not necessarily bounded by phenotype or essence – especially in South Africa, where race and a fixation of rigid social categories continue to be a central part of how South Africans navigate and understand the world around them.

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / This study examines student activism and student protests that occurred at South African higher education institutions (HEIs) during the academic years 2015 and 2016. These protests were inspired by multiple grievances experienced by students at HEIs, which included protesting against the maintenance and celebration of imperial symbols at universities as well as the unaffordability of academic and residence fees. These protests were different to previous student protests in that student discontentment and protests were popularised and advocated through social media under Twitter hashtags such as #RhodesMustFall (RMF) and #FeesMustFall (FMF).

In April 2015, the bronze statue of Cecil John Rhodes- notorious mining magnate, archimperialist and champion of a global Anglo-Saxon empire- was removed from its concrete plinth overlooking Cape Town, South Africa. This came as a result of the #RhodesMustFall (#RMF) movement, a movement that would see statues questioned and vandalised across the country. Two years later, fierce contestation over the hegemonic narrative told through the American South’s symbolic landscape erupted over the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, resulting in the deaths of multiple people in Charlottesville, Virginia. Increasing research on the removal of Rhodes and the removal of Confederate statuary has emerged in recent years. However, previous scholarship has failed to compare the wider phenomena of the calls for removal, from the memorialised figures to their change in symbolic capital, the movements’ inception and its outcomes. There is subsequently a gap in the literature understanding what the politics of statue removal tell us about not only the American and South African commemorative landscapes, but the nations’ interpretations of the past and societies themselves. Therefore, this thesis uses descriptive comparative analysis to compare two case studies where the debate over statue removal has surfaced most vehemently: Rhodes’ statue at the University of Cape Town and Lee’s statue in Charlottesville. Ultimately, this dissertation finds that the calls for the removal of statues are part of a wider change in tenor towards understanding and disrupting prevailing hegemonic narratives of white supremacy, in both society and its symbolic landscape. The phenomena demonstrates that heterogeneous societies with pasts marred by segregation and racism are moving to reject and re-negotiate these histories and their symbols, a move that has elicited deeply divided, emotional responses. Despite waning attention to monument removals, the issue remains unresolved, contentious, and capable of re-igniting.

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<p>The kinematics and associated deformation of upper crust in fossil and active convergent tectonic settings require different methods of study. In this thesis, I analyzed an example of a fossil convergent setting, the formation of the eastern portion of Paleoproterozoic Sudbury Basin, Ontario, and an example of an active convergent plate interface represented by the ongoing subduction along the Hellenic Arc at Rhodes, Greece. In Sudbury, using paleomagnetic remanence directions and Matachewan dyke orientations, I constrain the magnitudes of rotation associated with the formation of the NE-lobe, a tight secondary fold of the Sudbury Basin, as well as localize the fold axis and magnitude of rotation along the West Bay Anticline, a hitherto unknown fold of the Basin.</p> <p>For the Island of Rhodes, I corroborate the existence of two phases of Plio-Pleistocene or younger deformation including providing their principal strain axis orientations from a fault-slip analysis. In addition, I estimate the magnitude of slip from faults to generate respective incremental strain ellipses of the two deformation phases for the Island. The first phase is characterized by vertical shortening (ŝ₃) and N-S extension (ŝ₁) with associated normal faulting while the second phase is characterized by N-S shortening (ŝ₃) and E-W extension (ŝ₁) associated with strike-slip faulting.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Il est reconnu que la poésie hellénistique a donné à l’expression du sentiment amoureux une importance inédite, mais la rupture que constitue ce fait littéraire par rapport aux œuvres du passé n’a cependant pas toujours été suffisamment mise en avant. Cette étude propose donc d’examiner les spécificités de cette représentation de l’amour et de montrer qu’elle ressortit principalement au registre pathétique. Ainsi, dans une perspective diachronique, elle s’attache tout d’abord à rappeler les particularités de la représentation de l’amour dans la poésie des époques archaïque et classique, et à montrer notamment le rôle secondaire qu’y tient cette thématique. Puis, après avoir analysé les caractéristiques, complexes mais toujours éminemment négatives, que les poètes hellénistiques attribuent à l’amour, essentiellement réduit pour eux à l’ἔρως, elle examine les modalités précises de son expression pathétique, une innovation importante grâce à laquelle la thématique amoureuse a pu accéder en littérature au rang d’un véritable sentiment. Cette étude permet enfin de montrer que la représentation pathétique du sentiment amoureux est l’une des clefs pour comprendre plusieurs caractéristiques et enjeux fondamentaux de la poésie hellénistique, à propos de laquelle il convient de parler d’une véritable poétique de l’amour. En effet, le pathétique amoureux peut s’y lire comme un paradigme méta-poétique qui ne reflète pas seulement les nouvelles valeurs esthétiques de l’époque hellénistique mais également les conditions, inédites, de création et de réception des œuvres littéraires, en particulier dans leurs rapports, aussi étroits qu’ambigus, aux cours royales et à la tradition. / Hellenistic poetry attributed an importance to love never encountered in poetry before. This literary break with the past has only ever received scant attention. This study sets out to examine the specifics of how love was represented and to show how it essentially emerges from the pathetic register. From a diachronic perspective, the study aims to focus on the particular characteristics of the representation of love in the poetry of the classical and archaic periods, and above all demonstrate the secondary role the theme was accorded. After an analysis of the complex, but always eminently negative, characteristics, attributed to love by Hellenistic poets, which, to them, is essentially reduced to ἔρως, the study examines the precise modalities of its expression through pathos, an important innovation through which the theme of love became recognised as a genuine feeling in literature. This study ultimately enables us to show that the pathetic representation of love is one of the keys to understanding several characteristics and fundamental issues of Hellenistic poetry, through a genuine poetics of love. Romantic pathos can indeed be interpreted here as a meta-poetic paradigm which does not only reflect the new aesthetic values of the Hellenistic age but also the new conditions of creation and reception of literary works, in particular in their close and ambiguous relationships with royal courts and tradition.

The present study explores Rhodes students' perceptions and attitudes towards HIV/Aids issues. This study focuses on risk behaviour, stigmatisation, social perceptions and voluntary counselling and HIV testing (VCT). There is a lack of research on student attitudes, knowledge and behaviour at Rhodes University. It was therefore deemed pertinent to research this topic in that context. It was envisaged that the study would provide insights to be used in the formulation of improved strategies for HIV/Aids programs and education, ultimately impacting on the exponential increase of the pandemic in the Southern African region. A sample of six hundred and seventy five Rhodes University undergraduates completed a survey and its findings were interpreted in terms of relevant literature. A mixed methods approach using qualitative and quantitative methods was used. A focus group consisting of seven post-graduate students informed the development of the survey along with relevant literature. Four departments from the faculties of Commerce, Humanities, Science and Law were randomly sampled for the survey phase. Statistica was used to calculate descriptive statistics while the chi-square statistic was applied to examine the relationships between the variables. The findings show that the majority of students have high intention levels in planning to use preventative behaviour. However, in practise, this may not be the case. Many students feel that they belong to high or medium risk groups, as opposed to the low-risk groups. In terms of motivation levels, only sixty three percent of students are highly motivated to protect themselves from HIV/Aids and one third of respondents felt that they could not ask their partner to accompany them for an HIV/Aids test. In addition, students who had received VCT were more likely to be positive about the counselling process.