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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
1

Only a trickle? Blood in detail and three women's films

Field, E January 2003 (has links) (PDF)
This thesis constructs an analysis of the representation of blood in a selection of American films. This analysis does not aim to construct a representative theory of blood, rather, it examines discrete instances and certain relationships between a mainstream discourse of blood and various resistances presented by women film directors. In particular these films present critical approaches to blood at the level of mise-en-scene. The specific presentation of blood works in ways that resist a realist and masculinist tradition that codes blood as a marker of the feminine. An analysis of blood in mise-en-scene is used to reflect upon wider questions of narrative. I use this methodology in the absence of film criticism identifying blood as a specific object of extended analysis. Three theoretical essays form a general backdrop to the project: Barbara Creed's influential study of horror, The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis, where blood indicates abjection, castration and the femme castratrice; Steve Neale's essay 'Masculinity as Spectacle' that reads blood as indicating disavowed homoeroticism and doomed narcissism in the Western; and Teresa de Lauretis's essay 'Desire in Narrative' where blood is a marker of the story of the mythological male subject. I isolate two films; Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Martin Scorsese's 'Taxi Driver'(1976) as inaugurating certain mainstream aesthetics of libidinal violence. Blood here is the paint of penetration and distorted pleasure, however blood also serves to erase a female narrative. In the three films that form the focus of the project, blood is frequently an intertextual key that undoes the overdetermined patterns it speaks to. Bette Gordon's Variety (1983) and Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel (1990) evoke scenes from Taxi Driver and Psycho. In Variety sex and blood are the red herrings to an open ended investigation into the scene of pornography. Blue Steel explores the allure of the gun for a female protagonist while detaching the gun from blood as libidinal. While both Variety and Blue Steel intervene into existing structures and genres, Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is an experimental film and defines itself in opposition to Hollywood cinema. However, this film serves as a postscript to the project in its poetic displacement of mise-en-scene and a female subject position. This film speaks to de Lauretis's concerns in 'Desire in Narrative' in its evocation of the myth of Perseus from the Medusa's point of view. Blood functions as a literal condensation of dreamed and lived events: it is ambivalent realisation of woman's figuration within cinematic myth.
2

Bringing The Dingo Home: Discursive Representations of the Dingo by Aboriginal, Colonial and Contemporary Australians

Parker, MA Unknown Date (has links) (PDF)
My thesis examines the discourse which has encoded the dingo since it arrived in Australia nearly five thousand years ago. While post-colonial theory has exposed the ideological structures and material practices which position indigenous peoples as "other" to the colonisers, most scholars have remained curiously silent when it comes to nonhumans. Animals now stand as the ultimate "other", denied a subjective life of their own, for their behaviour is usually read, as Helen Tiffin argues, "as having primary (and exclusive) significance for humans." The project of this thesis is to examine the narratives within which Australians have "trapped" their dingoes. My methodology takes as its starting point Foucault's theories which connect discourse and power. The thesis is divided into three sections; Colonial Discourses, Aboriginal Dreaming and Contemporary Configurations. The colonial section asks how discourse forces the dingo to represent human fears and failings. I argue that a denigrating discourse is used to justify the ill treatment of the dingo, that discourse reveals little about the "real" dingo, and that there are similarities in the discursive treatment of dingoes and Aborigines. The thesis also acknowledges the dingo's attempts to slip through the gaps in the discourse "fence". The second section researches traditional Aboriginal myths of the Dreaming Dingo. By encouraging the dingo to trot back to happier times, I allow the reader to step back also and assess Aboriginal representations of the dingo, arguing that these are based on an empirical knowledge of its habits and nature. I contend that in contrast to a colonial discourse based on difference, the Aboriginal narratives assume similarities to animals and the potential for crossovers. This section argues that a pragmatic Dreaming Dingo teaches humans to live harmoniously and cautiously in an environment which is both nurturing and dangerous. Finally the dingo returns to the trail and trots into a place where practical knowledge of wilderness is negligible. The contemporary section of this thesis argues that in their longing to claim the dingo and its wildness for their emotional and spiritual needs, urban Australians generate a confused, incompatible and ignorant mix of colonial and Dreaming Discourse. The dingo in the National Park is required to carry an impossible discourse and it fails - biting the hands which feed it. "Bringing the Dingo Home" reflects an exciting time as one more "other' breaks "the deafening silence" described by Wolch and Emel, and demands a position in post-colonial discourse. At last the discourse of the dingo can be foregrounded and its misrepresentations can be redressed.
3

Identity, tradition and globalism in post-Cultural Revolution Chinese feature films

Lam, Yung Adam January 2000 (has links)
After the Cultural Revolution officially ended in 1977, China began its reforms from 1978. Although the initial goal of the reforms was to improve the nation's economy, changes soon took place across other fields ranging from politics to culture, from society to the legal system. These changes throughout the 1980s and 1990s had a significant impact on the development of Chinese film. Contemporary Chinese films reflect these changes either directly or indirectly. This thesis studies the development of film in post-Cultural Revolution China to the mid-1990s. The thesis argues that Chinese film experienced a shift of cultural identity from being subject to Chinese tradition to submitting to transnational globalism. The causes of this shift were a combination of China's own reform process and international cultural and financial involvement in the Chinese film industry. In light of some Western cultural theories, such as structuralism, post-structuralism (including deconstruction), psycho-analysis and postmodernism, this thesis examines a series of acclaimed Chinese directors and films. Many of these directors and films are internationally well known either for their cinematic achievements or for the political controversies about their films. They are seen as representative, especially when contemporary Chinese film is assessed from a cross-cultural, global perspective. In a new millennium Chinese cultural policies on film production and censorship are changing. This thesis summarizes how the Chinese film industry in the last two decades has responded to, and from time to time accelerated the country's modernization, commercialization and internationalisation. / http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Tradition-Globalism-Post-Cultural-Revolution/dp/3639111060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236640154&sr=1-1 / Note: A book based on this thesis is published by VDM Verlag (2008) ISBN 3639111060 and available from http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Tradition-Globalism-Post-Cultural-Revolution/dp/3639111060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236640154&sr=1-1
4

Identity, tradition and globalism in post-Cultural Revolution Chinese feature films

Lam, Yung Adam January 2000 (has links)
After the Cultural Revolution officially ended in 1977, China began its reforms from 1978. Although the initial goal of the reforms was to improve the nation's economy, changes soon took place across other fields ranging from politics to culture, from society to the legal system. These changes throughout the 1980s and 1990s had a significant impact on the development of Chinese film. Contemporary Chinese films reflect these changes either directly or indirectly. This thesis studies the development of film in post-Cultural Revolution China to the mid-1990s. The thesis argues that Chinese film experienced a shift of cultural identity from being subject to Chinese tradition to submitting to transnational globalism. The causes of this shift were a combination of China's own reform process and international cultural and financial involvement in the Chinese film industry. In light of some Western cultural theories, such as structuralism, post-structuralism (including deconstruction), psycho-analysis and postmodernism, this thesis examines a series of acclaimed Chinese directors and films. Many of these directors and films are internationally well known either for their cinematic achievements or for the political controversies about their films. They are seen as representative, especially when contemporary Chinese film is assessed from a cross-cultural, global perspective. In a new millennium Chinese cultural policies on film production and censorship are changing. This thesis summarizes how the Chinese film industry in the last two decades has responded to, and from time to time accelerated the country's modernization, commercialization and internationalisation. / http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Tradition-Globalism-Post-Cultural-Revolution/dp/3639111060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236640154&sr=1-1 / Note: A book based on this thesis is published by VDM Verlag (2008) ISBN 3639111060 and available from http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Tradition-Globalism-Post-Cultural-Revolution/dp/3639111060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236640154&sr=1-1
5

The assertion of Tasmanian Aboriginality From the 1967 Referendum to Mabo

Daniels, DW January 1995 (has links) (PDF)
This paper takes as its starting point a period before the 1967 Referendum which gave full citizenship rights to Australian Aborigines and the Federal Government a mandate over Aboriginal Affairs. During the 40's and 50's the Aboriginal people of Tasmania, represented by the people of Cape Barren Island, stubbornly resisted the assimilation policies of the day. In briefly examining the thesis of resistance as proposed by Lyndall Ryan in her 1981 edition of The Aboriginal Tasmanians, and the proposition that the Government sought to abandon the Island, the paper draws upon new material. Despite the referendum the State government like the wider community saw little relevance to Tasmania, denying the existence of Aborigines as such, but joining in the CommonwealWState Conferences of Aboriginal Affairs to safeguard State interests, obtain funds to prop up services to the Island, particularly health, and to secure housing finance. Support for the Aboriginal cause, however, was not lacking. The Aboriginal Advancement League based in Devonport, the Communist Party of Tasmania and Abschol, which was to become the Australian Union of Students action group for Aboriginal rights, were to play a role in sensitising the Tasmanian community to Aboriginal issues and in seeking justice for Tasmanian Aborigines. It was Abschol, however, which was to become the dominant non- Aboriginal organisation in the pursuit of Aboriginal rights. In the early '70's the Tasmanian Aboriginal people decided to take over their own destiny. This assertion was led by Rosalynd Langford, a Victorian Aborigine of Tasmanian descent. In 1972 the Aboriginal Information Centre (later the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre) was established. This paper looks at the history of TAC over the next 20 years. It was to become one of the most forceful and successful black political organisations in Australia and we examine the reason for that success. Whilst the figure of Michael, Mansell emerges on the local, national and eventually the international scene, the record would not be complete if it neglected reference to other contributors to the struggle. Neither would the story be complete without reference to the genealogical work of Mollison et al, the whole question of Aboriginality, the reworking of Aboriginal history from the people's perspective, cultural renewal and Aboriginal spirituality. Central to this issue of history and identity is the world wide quest for the skeletal remains of the Van Diemen's Land people and theirreturn to Tasmania, which the paper identifies as a brilliant strategy of unification and consciousness raising, but one full of emotional and spiritual overtones. This paper concludes with an examination .of the struggle for Land Rights in Tasmania. At this point in time some form of Land Rights legislation seems inevitable, although as the story tells, Aboriginal people have had their previous hopes dashed on a number of occasions.* There is, however, a further matter on the Aboriginal agenda; self govenunent. To underestimate these later aspirations is to fail to recognise the power and commitment of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. * Note: In November 1995 an Aboriginal Lands Bill passed throug-h the Tasmanian Parliament (proclaimed 6 December, 1995), 'transferring certain lands to the Aboriginal people and establishing an Aboriginal Lands trust.
6

Identity, tradition and globalism in post-Cultural Revolution Chinese feature films

Lam, Yung Adam January 2000 (has links)
After the Cultural Revolution officially ended in 1977, China began its reforms from 1978. Although the initial goal of the reforms was to improve the nation's economy, changes soon took place across other fields ranging from politics to culture, from society to the legal system. These changes throughout the 1980s and 1990s had a significant impact on the development of Chinese film. Contemporary Chinese films reflect these changes either directly or indirectly. This thesis studies the development of film in post-Cultural Revolution China to the mid-1990s. The thesis argues that Chinese film experienced a shift of cultural identity from being subject to Chinese tradition to submitting to transnational globalism. The causes of this shift were a combination of China's own reform process and international cultural and financial involvement in the Chinese film industry. In light of some Western cultural theories, such as structuralism, post-structuralism (including deconstruction), psycho-analysis and postmodernism, this thesis examines a series of acclaimed Chinese directors and films. Many of these directors and films are internationally well known either for their cinematic achievements or for the political controversies about their films. They are seen as representative, especially when contemporary Chinese film is assessed from a cross-cultural, global perspective. In a new millennium Chinese cultural policies on film production and censorship are changing. This thesis summarizes how the Chinese film industry in the last two decades has responded to, and from time to time accelerated the country's modernization, commercialization and internationalisation. / http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Tradition-Globalism-Post-Cultural-Revolution/dp/3639111060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236640154&sr=1-1 / Note: A book based on this thesis is published by VDM Verlag (2008) ISBN 3639111060 and available from http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Tradition-Globalism-Post-Cultural-Revolution/dp/3639111060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236640154&sr=1-1
7

Identity, tradition and globalism in post-Cultural Revolution Chinese feature films

Lam, Yung Adam January 2000 (has links)
After the Cultural Revolution officially ended in 1977, China began its reforms from 1978. Although the initial goal of the reforms was to improve the nation's economy, changes soon took place across other fields ranging from politics to culture, from society to the legal system. These changes throughout the 1980s and 1990s had a significant impact on the development of Chinese film. Contemporary Chinese films reflect these changes either directly or indirectly. This thesis studies the development of film in post-Cultural Revolution China to the mid-1990s. The thesis argues that Chinese film experienced a shift of cultural identity from being subject to Chinese tradition to submitting to transnational globalism. The causes of this shift were a combination of China's own reform process and international cultural and financial involvement in the Chinese film industry. In light of some Western cultural theories, such as structuralism, post-structuralism (including deconstruction), psycho-analysis and postmodernism, this thesis examines a series of acclaimed Chinese directors and films. Many of these directors and films are internationally well known either for their cinematic achievements or for the political controversies about their films. They are seen as representative, especially when contemporary Chinese film is assessed from a cross-cultural, global perspective. In a new millennium Chinese cultural policies on film production and censorship are changing. This thesis summarizes how the Chinese film industry in the last two decades has responded to, and from time to time accelerated the country's modernization, commercialization and internationalisation. / http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Tradition-Globalism-Post-Cultural-Revolution/dp/3639111060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236640154&sr=1-1 / Note: A book based on this thesis is published by VDM Verlag (2008) ISBN 3639111060 and available from http://www.amazon.com/Identity-Tradition-Globalism-Post-Cultural-Revolution/dp/3639111060/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1236640154&sr=1-1
8

The function, design and distribution of New Zealand adzes

Turner, Marianne January 2000 (has links)
The main objective of this thesis was to understand the function, design and distribution of New Zealand adzes, aspects little studied in Polynesia as a whole. Methodology involved functional and manufacturing replication experiments and comparisons of these results with statistics derived from the analysis of almost 12,000 archaeological adzes. Methodology was guided by technological organization theory which states that technological strategies reflect human behaviours and that artefacts like adzes are physical manifestations of the strategies employed by people to overcome problems posed by environmental and resource conditions. Variability in adze morphology was discovered to be the outcome of ongoing technological adjustments to a range of conditions that were constrained by a set of functionally defined parameters. The nature of the raw material, both for the adzes themselves and to make them, had a major influence on adze technology and morphology within these functional parameters. Four basic functional adze types were identified fi-om distinct and consistent combinations of design attributes not previously recognized explicitly in previous adze typologies. It was found that design attributes previously considered significant like crosssection shape and butt reduction were more heavily influenced by raw material quality than functional specifications. It was also important to recognize that form and function changed over time with use, and because adzes were so valuable due to manufacturing costs, they were intensively curated. The majority of archaeological specimens studied for this thesis had seen major morphological and functional change. This dynamic was included ,in a typology based on 'adze state7 as findings suggested (1) that extending adze use-life and optimizing reworking potential was incorporated in initial design strategies, (2) that intensive curation may have played a major role in changes in adze morphology over time, and (3). that it had a major influence on distribution and discard patterns in the archaeological record. Having identified these influences on adze discard and distribution, two complex production and distribution networks were observed for the North Island based around Tahanga basalt and Nelson~Marlborough argillite. Each was complimentary to the other and involved other major and minor products and materials. Influential factors in the roles different settlements played in distribution included where people and raw materials were in relation to one another and the mode of transportation. The coastal location of early period settlements and important stone sources was an important aspect of these networks.
9

Globalisation and the Return to Empire: an Indigenous Response = Te torino whakahaere, whakamuri

Stewart-Harawira, Makere January 2002 (has links)
Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / This thesis may be regarded as both a history of the present and a signifier for the future. Developed during a time of dramatic global upheavals and transformations, it is concerned with the political economy of world order and the ontologies of being upon which world order is predicated. As the framework for the world order of nation states, international law was the means whereby indigenous peoples within colonised territories reconstructed from sovereign nations to dependent populations. Undperpinning this body of law and the political formations of world order were sets of social and political ontologies which continue to be contested. These ontologies are frequently at variance with those of indigenous peoples and shape the arena within which the struggle for self-determination and the validation of indigenous knowledge, values and subjectivities is played out. Contextualised within the international political and juridical framework, the thesis utilises critical theoretical traditions to examine the participation of indigenous peoples in the construction of world order and new global formations. Positioned from a Maori perspective, the thesis also tracks the historical role of education in the development of world order and considers the role and form of Maori educational resistance. In engaging with these issues across macro and micro levels, the thesis identifies the international arena, the national state and forms of regionalism as sites for the reshaping of the global politico/economic order and the emergence of Empire. Allied to this are the reconstruction of hierarchies of knowledge and subjectivities within new Manichean divides. Key questions raised in the thesis concern the positioning of indigenous ontologies and epistemologies within the emergent global order, and the nature of resistance or response. Calls for a new ontology of world order are increasingly being articulated in response to the multiple and increasing crises of globalisation. This thesis argues that, far from irrelevant, traditional indigenous social, political and cosmological ontologies are profoundly important to the development of transformative alternative frameworks for global order.
10

The function, design and distribution of New Zealand adzes

Turner, Marianne January 2000 (has links)
The main objective of this thesis was to understand the function, design and distribution of New Zealand adzes, aspects little studied in Polynesia as a whole. Methodology involved functional and manufacturing replication experiments and comparisons of these results with statistics derived from the analysis of almost 12,000 archaeological adzes. Methodology was guided by technological organization theory which states that technological strategies reflect human behaviours and that artefacts like adzes are physical manifestations of the strategies employed by people to overcome problems posed by environmental and resource conditions. Variability in adze morphology was discovered to be the outcome of ongoing technological adjustments to a range of conditions that were constrained by a set of functionally defined parameters. The nature of the raw material, both for the adzes themselves and to make them, had a major influence on adze technology and morphology within these functional parameters. Four basic functional adze types were identified fi-om distinct and consistent combinations of design attributes not previously recognized explicitly in previous adze typologies. It was found that design attributes previously considered significant like crosssection shape and butt reduction were more heavily influenced by raw material quality than functional specifications. It was also important to recognize that form and function changed over time with use, and because adzes were so valuable due to manufacturing costs, they were intensively curated. The majority of archaeological specimens studied for this thesis had seen major morphological and functional change. This dynamic was included ,in a typology based on 'adze state7 as findings suggested (1) that extending adze use-life and optimizing reworking potential was incorporated in initial design strategies, (2) that intensive curation may have played a major role in changes in adze morphology over time, and (3). that it had a major influence on distribution and discard patterns in the archaeological record. Having identified these influences on adze discard and distribution, two complex production and distribution networks were observed for the North Island based around Tahanga basalt and Nelson~Marlborough argillite. Each was complimentary to the other and involved other major and minor products and materials. Influential factors in the roles different settlements played in distribution included where people and raw materials were in relation to one another and the mode of transportation. The coastal location of early period settlements and important stone sources was an important aspect of these networks.

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