Family is a work of creative fiction concerning four women and their relationships with each other. It is threaded with scenes from their past lives which hint at their previous connections with each other. These images of the past start to intrude into and affect their present lives. The central character, and storyteller of the present,is Margaret, a married woman who is finding that the 'comfort' of stereotypical behaviour and a prescribed marital relationship is a fiction. For Margaret, the intrusions of these past memories reveal to her traits in her character, aiding an understanding of herself, and eventually gives her freedom from her present situation. / Master of Arts (Hons) (Writing)

This essay attempts to explain and justify the style and structure of the novel within the traditions of contemporary literary writing. It will discuss realist conventions and devices applied in the novel, such as plot and character, and examine their effectiveness, or limits, in telling a story. The writing of this novel was prompted by the relentless stream of political events that has flowed through the recent history of Singapore. Since the island's independence from British colonial rule in 1965, a small ruling elite embarked on a ferocious nation-building programme that has not always recognised its citizens as individuals, but rather more collectively as workers, managers, professionals, housewives and students: each group expected to perform a specific role in society. State apparatuses such as law enforcement, the civil service and the mass media are engineered to direct the conduct of citizens from cradle to grave. This instigated, and provided the background to, the writing of Plato's Illusion. An objective of this novel is to document as well as imaginatively capture life in Singapore under its prevailing authoritarian rule. The writing strategy adopted is to represent politics in terms of individual 'common' experience, for almost every aspect of the private citizen's life has been politicised in Singapore. Government intervention and manipulation are situated in the personal affairs of attending university, getting a job, finding a husband and having children. In other words, by portraying the process and effects of those interventions on the characters in the novel, the body politics will simultaneously take on a more concrete shape with a face and an attitude. This strategy, used in the development of plot and characters, would be a good representation of life in Singapore, if the effects of government policies and the personal psyche were thoroughly explored and articulated. / Master of Arts (Hons)

[No Abstract]

This thesis examines art critical writing on contemporary Australian art published between 1960 and 1988 through the lens of its engagement with its location, looking at how it directly or indirectly engaged with the issues arising from Australia's so-called peripheral position in relation to the would-be hegemonic centre. I propose that Australian art criticism is marked by writers' acceptances of the apparent explanatory necessity of constructing appropriate nationalist discourses, evident in different and succeeding types of nationalist agendas, each with links to external, non-artistic agendas of nation and politics. I will argue that the nationalist parameters and trajectory of Australian art writing were set by Australian art historian, Bernard Smith, and his book Australian Painting, 1788-1960 (1962) and that the history of Australian art writing from the 1960s onwards was marked by a succession of nationalist rather than artistic agendas formed, in turn, by changing experiences of the Cold War. Through this, I will begin to provide a critical framework that has not effectively existed so far, due to the binary terror of regionalism versus internationalism. / Chapter One focuses on Bernard Smith and the late 1950s and early 1960s Australian intellectual context in which Australian Painting 1788-1960 was published. I will argue that, although it can be claimed that Australia was a postcolonial society, the most powerful political and social influence during the 1950s and 1960s was the Cold War and that this can be identified in Australian art criticism and Australian art. Chapter Two discusses art theorist, Donald Brook. Brook is of particular interest because he kept his art writing separate from his theories of social and political issues, focussing on contemporary art and artists. I argue that Brook's failure to engage with questions of nation and Australian identity directly ensured that he remained a respected but marginal figure in the history of Australian art writing. Chapter Three returns to the centre/periphery issue and examines the art writing of Patrick McCaughey and Terry Smith. Each of these writers dealt with the issue of the marginality of Australian art but neither writer questioned the validity of the centre/periphery model. / Chapter Four examines six Australian art magazines that came into existence in the 1970s, a decade of high hopes and deep disillusionment. The chapter maps two shifts of emphasis in Australian art writing. First, the change from the previous preoccupation with provincialism to pluralist social issues such as feminism, and second, the resulting gravitation of individual writers into ideological alliances and/or administrative collectives that founded, ran and supported magazines that printed material that focused on (usually Australian) art in relation to specific social, cultural or political issues. Chapter Five concentrates on the Australian art magazine, Art & Text, and Paul Taylor, its founder and editor. Taylor and his magazine were at the centre of a new Australian attempt to solve the provincialism problem and thus break free of the centre/periphery model.

This thesis examines art critical writing on contemporary Australian art published between 1960 and 1988 through the lens of its engagement with its location, looking at how it directly or indirectly engaged with the issues arising from Australia's so-called peripheral position in relation to the would-be hegemonic centre. I propose that Australian art criticism is marked by writers' acceptances of the apparent explanatory necessity of constructing appropriate nationalist discourses, evident in different and succeeding types of nationalist agendas, each with links to external, non-artistic agendas of nation and politics. I will argue that the nationalist parameters and trajectory of Australian art writing were set by Australian art historian, Bernard Smith, and his book Australian Painting, 1788-1960 (1962) and that the history of Australian art writing from the 1960s onwards was marked by a succession of nationalist rather than artistic agendas formed, in turn, by changing experiences of the Cold War. Through this, I will begin to provide a critical framework that has not effectively existed so far, due to the binary terror of regionalism versus internationalism. / Chapter One focuses on Bernard Smith and the late 1950s and early 1960s Australian intellectual context in which Australian Painting 1788-1960 was published. I will argue that, although it can be claimed that Australia was a postcolonial society, the most powerful political and social influence during the 1950s and 1960s was the Cold War and that this can be identified in Australian art criticism and Australian art. Chapter Two discusses art theorist, Donald Brook. Brook is of particular interest because he kept his art writing separate from his theories of social and political issues, focussing on contemporary art and artists. I argue that Brook's failure to engage with questions of nation and Australian identity directly ensured that he remained a respected but marginal figure in the history of Australian art writing. Chapter Three returns to the centre/periphery issue and examines the art writing of Patrick McCaughey and Terry Smith. Each of these writers dealt with the issue of the marginality of Australian art but neither writer questioned the validity of the centre/periphery model. / Chapter Four examines six Australian art magazines that came into existence in the 1970s, a decade of high hopes and deep disillusionment. The chapter maps two shifts of emphasis in Australian art writing. First, the change from the previous preoccupation with provincialism to pluralist social issues such as feminism, and second, the resulting gravitation of individual writers into ideological alliances and/or administrative collectives that founded, ran and supported magazines that printed material that focused on (usually Australian) art in relation to specific social, cultural or political issues. Chapter Five concentrates on the Australian art magazine, Art & Text, and Paul Taylor, its founder and editor. Taylor and his magazine were at the centre of a new Australian attempt to solve the provincialism problem and thus break free of the centre/periphery model.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to compare Far Eastern influences on Western women's dress as represented in both a high fashion and mass fashion magazine between 1910 and 1925. Vogue was selected as the high fashion magazine and Ladies Home Journal as the mass fashion magazine. The questions that were addressed were: was there a difference in the influence of the Far East on high fashion styles and mass fashion styles, was there a time lapse between the appearance of fashion styles influenced by the Far East within Vogue and Ladies Home Journal, and was the trickle-down theory applicable when examining Far Eastern influence on high fashion styles and mass fashion styles. The data were collected by conducting a content analysis of both the written and visual material within Vogue and Ladies Home Journal. For each magazine the January, April, July, and October issues were examined, totaling a 128 issues between the years 1910 and 1925. The written examples found within both magazines were placed into three categories; Chinese, Japanese, and Far Eastern/Oriental. Visual examples found were placed into three categories also; Chinese, Japanese, and Combination. An example of Far Eastern influence on written or visual material was based on predetermined guidelines. It was hypothesized that there would be a difference in the frequency of Far Eastern influence seen in high fashion styles as represented in Vogue and mass fashion styles as represented in Ladies Home Journal between 1910 and 1925. The sign test was used to compare the two samples Vogue and Ladies Home Journal and test this hypothesis. It was determined that there was not a significant difference found in either the written or visual material therefore this hypothesis was rejected. The second hypothesis was that there would be a difference in the period of introduction of fashion styles influenced by the Far East between Vogue and Ladies Home Journal. There was no apparent difference between the period of introduction of fashion styles influenced by the Far East in Vogue and Ladies Home Journal between 1910 and 1925 when examining total frequencies of both written and visual material. Some differences were evident when examining categorical breakdowns which led to neither the acceptance or rejection of the hypothesis due to the differing results. / Graduation date: 1994

The life and works of the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) have been well documented. However, a comprehensive study concerning any of his nine works for piano and orchestra has not been undertaken. Among this prolific output, the Mômoprecóce, fantasie pour piano et orchestra, stands as a faithful representation of the composer's skillful orchestration, descriptive piano writing through the observation of a childhood universe, and his multi-faceted approach to nationalism. The fantasy is a through-composed arrangement of a previous solo piano suite by Villa-Lobos entitled, Carnaval das crianças brasileiras (Brazilian Children's Carnival, 1919). This research aims to investigate the historic, stylistic, and interpretative aspects of Mômoprecóce, while discussing the composer's unique usage of the piano through his innovative compositional techniques and comparison of the fantasy with his original solo piano suite. Current literature in English, Portuguese and French is thoroughly examined, discussed, evaluated, and cited. In addition I provide a formal analysis, an interpretative guide, and a sociological perspective into Brazilian carnival, as specifically applied to the performance of Mômoprecóce.

The majority of standard solo repertoire that violists perform was written in the twentieth century, but the pedagogical materials violists study are largely transcriptions of violin etudes, studies, and scales, which were all written in the nineteenth century or earlier. Music written in the twentieth century uses a language and techniques that are quite different from those found in older, tonal music. Because of this, violists are often unprepared for the challenges of their standard solo repertoire, and the pedagogical materials they study do not fulfill their purpose: to educate students in the skills necessary for successful musical performance. The first part of this document is historical, attempting to explain how the viola has arrived in the early twenty-first century without its own unique body of pedagogical materials suited its repertoire. The second part of this document is practical: it proposes a pedagogy for the viola that will help to better prepare students to play our standard repertoire. This part of the document uses an extensive number of musical examples from the standard twentieth-century repertoire to illustrate how the various etudes, studies, exercises, and scales presented can be used to help students in tackling the challenges of twentieth-century music more successfully.

Today, a growing number of Pakistani artists have embraced the nation’s perceived visual languages and political, social, and cultural history to interrogate and unpack Pakistan’s contemporary society and identity. The fruits of this shifting and mixing are works of art that turn artistic and societal traditions, from miniature painting to matrimonial rites, on their sides even as they uphold their significance. In these works, artists present their views on life in the country and their experiences as Pakistanis. Their paintings, videos, sculptures, installations, mixed media works, prints, and drawings are not soapboxes from which they shout out their messages. Instead they present issues and concerns in a manner that means to define them uniquely as Pakistani. Unpredictable social developments and current events that require in-depth investigation appear in imagery without any direct answers to these debates. Rather, Pakistani artists offer them to incite further investigation. Through their works, artists express and examine the complicated nature of Pakistani national and cultural identities by looking at the society’s most volatile concerns. Yet they address these issues in an unexpected fashion. They examine serious concerns like the India/Pakistan divide in a humorous fashion; they explore bloody, murderous acts like “honor killings” in pristine paintings. In this multifaceted treatment, the intense issues affecting Pakistan are interrogated with ambiguity. These artists do not simply present critical issues related to society in Pakistan; they play with them. And in this way raise questions about their meanings. And they do not only look to Pakistani society for subject matter. They also turn to it for methods of approaching art by exhibiting sensitivity to traditional materials, techniques, and styles. I analyze this artwork within a context of art practices in Pakistan, pedagogical methods at art schools in the nation, and the impact of larger historical events and social processes: colonialism, the partition of India and Pakistan, and globalization. / text