This report chronicles the development and production of the short film, Just Us Chickens, written, directed, and produced by Erin Randall. The film is based on several true stories told by a Diane Hill James, who grew up in Smithville, Texas during the 1950s. The script weaves together Ms. James’s experiences growing up near the famous Texas brothel, The Chicken Ranch, located in the neighboring town of La Grange. Diane and her friends would frequently spy on the brothel and once a stranger, new to town, mistook her family home as the brothel and her as a prostitute. The film, Just us Chickens, considers how these experiences could inform and influence the sexual identity of a young woman, and aims to clarify the contradictory expectations put upon female sexual development both then and now. / text

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

This essay engages in a Lacanian reading of identity in John Banville’s Eclipse and argues that the protagonist Alex Cleave illustrates certain of Jacques Lacan’s ideas concerning subjectivity and the subject. Alex Cleave has a fragmented sense of identity and experiences alienation as well as loss and lack of authenticity. He is an actor and tries to create identity within his roles. Alex’s confusion about himself is played out in his relationships. Alex Cleave is a self-absorbed character who does not care for other people but only for himself. He uses other people, his family, ghosts and his stalking victims, as sources for an ideal ego and as a contrast to himself. The essay argues further that the novel suggests that identity is unstable and constructed within language. Alex Cleave tries to actively create identity by incorporating characteristics he has studied in his roles as well as other people, and he writes down his story, giving himself an identity in a book, Eclipse. To support its claims, the essay draws upon theories of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. Derrida’s concept of différance is used to explain the instability of identity. Lacan’s ideas about the development of identity in the course of the mirror stage and the Oedipal crisis are drawn upon. Furthermore, Lacan’s ideas about the unconscious, the Other and the imaginary and the symbolic order are employed.

This thesis is a theoretical and practical investigation of the role played by informal learning and teaching in the development of identity and applied knowledge. With the advent of mass schooling, there came to be a distinction between formal and informal education, with formal schooling representing the superiority of abstract, decontextualized, and rule-based learning over the informal, or the concrete, situated, and supposedly unstructured learning from everyday life. Research and theory in anthropology, sociocultural psychology and progressive educational philosophy have challenged this distinction, explicitly demonstrating the dialectical relationship between the formal and informal modes of all activity, regardless of setting. Inseparable from this conception of cognition is the notion that all knowledge is transmitted via culturally and sociohistorically framed and interrelated valuations of norms, beliefs, social conduct and the application of knowledge across spheres. / Progressive educational theorists argue that the creative process is the best means to tap the identity and skill-shaping potential of the informal mode. This proposition is actively and concretely investigated in this thesis through the writing, by this researcher, of a one-act play, Nineveh . As postulated by the theory, through the creative process the author's sense of identity and ability to creatively apply knowledge was affected positively. From this combined theoretical and practical examination of the informal mode of learning and teaching, a need for pluralistic educational praxis is forwarded. Engagement with the creative process is suggested as a means to help students feel more confident to learn from and enrich their lived experiences in their cultural environment, and thereby actively contribute to their interconnected sense of identity and mastery over multiple forms of applied knowledge.

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ABSTRACT The relationship between subjective age identity and ideal age, as measured by the Subjective Age Identity Scale (Hubley, 2004), and personality domains and facets, as measured by the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992), was investigated in a sample of 210 adults ages 19 to 78. Subjective age and ideal age scores were regressed, using multiple standard regressions, on the NEO-PI-R domains and facets, respectively. Results indicated that 22% of the variance in subjective age identity scores was explained by personality domains whereas 27% was explained by personality facets. Specifically, two personality domains (Openness to Experience and Neuroticism) and one personality facet (Aesthetics) made significant unique contributions to the explained variance in subjective age scores. Very little variance in ideal age scores was explained by personality domains and facets (less than 10%). One domain (Openness to Experience) and two facets (Vulnerability to Stress and Values) made significant unique contributions to the explained variance in the ideal age scores. These findings are examined in the context of the previous research on the relationship between personality and subjective age and the importance of conducting both domain and facet level analyses when using the NEO-PI-R is discussed. Implications of the present findings for counselling and clinical work with persons facing age role transitions or other age related concerns (e.g., negative attitudes towards aging) are highlighted.

In the process of negotiating land claims, First Nations in British Columbia and Canada face the challenging task of presenting a unified identity without trampling on the inevitable diversity within their communities. This thesis explores the perceived conflict between unity and diversity amongst Native populations. It brings together fieldwork in St6:l o territory in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, performance theory, and contemporary discourse surrounding identity production at this particular point in time. The work examines performance of identity as a form of social action and the variability of identity performances. Data was gathered from interviews with people involved with two sites where educational programmes are being developed for local students: Xa:ytem Longhouse Interpretive Centre at Hatzic Rock, near Mission, and Longhouse Extension Programme/ Shxwt'a:selhawtxw on St6:l o Nation grounds in Chilliwack. The theme explored in this thesis is that just as unity is politically expedient, diversity and its management is an important facet of the performance of identity.

Ariake no Wakare was thought to be a lost tale, but its unique manuscript was rediscovered in the early 1950s. Thirteenth-century references and internal evidence suggest a date of composition in the 1190s by an author in Teika's circle, and attest to Ariake's prominence in the thirteenth-century prose fiction canon. Thematically, it is virtually a 'summa' of previous monogatari themes woven together with remarkable dexterity and often startling originality. The term giko monogatari, 'pseudo-classical tales,' widely used to describe such late Heian and Kamakura period tales, and the associated style term gikobun, turn out to be Meiji era coinages with originally much wider and less pejorative connotations - a change perhaps related to contemporary language debates that valorized vernacular writing styles. The use of respect language and narrative asides, and the interaction between the narration and the plot, evokes a narrator with a distinct point of view, and suggest she may be the lady-in-waiting Jiju, making the text more explicitly autobiographical, and perhaps accounting for aspects of the narrative structure. Statistical information about Ariake, and analysis of respect language and certain fields of the lexicon reveal that Ariake is linguistically much closer to the Genji than are the few other giko monogatari for which information is available, but there are also a few very marked differences. Similar analysis of other giko monogatari would clarify whether these differences are characteristic of the subgenre or peculiar to Ariake no Wakare. Ariake no Wakare critiques male behaviour in courtship and marriage, and explores female-to-male crossdressing; the male gaze (kaimami); incestuous sexual abuse; both male and female same-sex and same-gender love; spirit possession in a context of marriage, pregnancy, and rival female desires, and other instances of the conspicuously gendered supernatural; and the gendered significance of genealogy. The treatment of gender roles and sexuality focuses on the interaction of performance skill and innate ability or inclination, and presents the mysterious beauty of the ambiguously gendered and liminally human, while genealogy is celebrated as privileged female knowledge. The text simultaneously invites and resists modern modes of reading. Rather than merely imitative, Ariake's treatment of familiar elements with changed contexts and interpretations produces both nostalgia and novelty.