This research examines ideas for change in Australia's social arrangements for care of young children. It focuses on mothers who, in spite of the impact of second-wave feminism, continue to provide most of the care of young children. The central thesis of this work is that Australia's arrangements amount to exploitation of the labour of mothers of young children by the rest of the community, and that it would be reasonable for the rest of the community to contribute much more in the way of economic resources to this work. This research brings together ideas from alternative economics about the economic value of unpaid work, sociological research into time use, and feminist critiques of the ideology of motherhood and the institution of the family. The research examines the issues through the lens of contemporary critical social theory, including relevant feminist theory. This framework emphasizes the concepts of oppression and exploitation, and draws heavily on the feminist critique of the public/private divide.

The study employs an innovative interdisciplinary research methodology to investigate text and context in international trade email communication. The approach combines analysis of communicators' email texts with conceptual analysis of their introspections while they are engaged in communicative situations and their retrospective reflections on their interactions. The study uses a series of simulated tasks and scenarios designed to reflect actual international trade email communication in the Asia Pacific region. Although the study does not start with a pre-determined view of static ethnic or national culture-based traits, participants with similar sociolinguistic and national cultural backgrounds are grouped and assigned the same task and scenario. This provides the possibility of considering their possible shared behavioural characteristics, whilst also exploring a number of other dimensions impacting on their communicative behaviour. The interdisciplinary theoretical framework combining insights and concepts from the disciplines of genre studies, pragmatics and cognitive message production has enabled the study to claim that there is a genre of international trade email communication in the Asia Pacific based on the established communication conventions evident in the shared communicative purposes, textual structures, and contextual knowledge, and distinctive generic characteristics. The shared communicative purposes and textual structure are demonstrated in a number of similar moves and acts from the analysis of email texts written by the four groups of participants who have different socio-cultural and socio-linguistic backgrounds in the six tasks. The similar communicative purposes are also recognized in participants' introspections related to the main business goal and their emphasis on certain goals across the five identified goal types in each task. These common communicative purposes are posited to shape the email generic structure and the email compositional conventions of professionals of the international trade discourse community. The semantic content, and the hybrid and dynamic nature of the texts are common distinctive characteristics of the international trade email communication. The common semantic content of moves and acts stem from the specific type of international trade business. The hybrid characteristic is evident in the variability in acceptable syntax in the linguistic realisation of some moves and acts, with full sentences right through to sentence fragments composed of various lengths, and the inconsistent and variable usage of the formulaic moves of the Addressing, the Expressing gratitude/respect/etc., and the Signing moves. The dynamic nature is evident in the similarities and differences in the usage of moves and acts and in the inconsistent usage of formulaic moves in the international trade email. It is contended that shared contextual knowledge of international trade email communication operates in the configuration of context that leads to common realization of moves and acts in the generic structure and communicative purposes of this email communication. The findings from the study have also led to a conceptualized model of these email communication practices. The model posits that contextual factors, goals and email texts relate dynamically and interactively. The professional business culture, the virtual culture and the formulaic interpersonal compositional conventions interact through the contexts of culture, situation, and text and determine potential meanings to be communicated in the overall environment of this communication. The interaction of these contextual factors leads to communication conventions in the generic realisation of moves and acts and the format of email to achieve collective communicative purposes among members of the electronic international trade discourse community. Variations in the generic structure of the email communication are postulated to stem from several contextual factors that are specific to individual trade transactions. In these transactions national/regional cultures, business relationship, traders' roles, counterpart, number of tasks in the email, turns in email exchanges have been shown to be important in contributing to the variability in how the genre of international trade email communication is realised in different specific international trade scenarios.

This thesis comprises a novel, Disco Apocalypse: Liminal Fictoscapes, and an accompanying exegesis, Hatricks: Where did the White Rabbit Go? which together explore socio-political and aesthetic currents in contemporary culture and literature by means of an authorial journey. The ultimate aim of the thesis is to create a body of work which applies a critical analysis and produces an original and exhilarating cutting edge narrative. Disco Apocalypse is a contemporary novel set in Melbourne, South America and Japan that explores the lives of two sisters, Kit and Suzy G who take a road/air journey to Peru, Brazil and Hiroshima. Kit is a film maker whose observational skills bring a visual acuity to the description of places and events in the cities and towns visited out on the road. In the course of the novel Suzy G disappears when her plane goes down over Bass Strait and no remains of the aircraft are discovered. The exegetical narrative was constructed in a manner resembling a series of reflections or reflective surfaces that highlight the images displayed in each segment. This process hovers in liminality, the second stage in a ritual event, where we are caught 'betwixt and between' the world of the novel and the world of the exegesis. PLEASE NOTE: Volume 1 of this thesis, the novel, is not available online.

This thesis explores the popularity in India of a contemporary prime time television serial, Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because Mother-in-law was Once a Daughter-in-law) which is now the longest running serial in India. Locating the emergence of this new genre of ‘family serial melodrama’ in light of the commercialisation, fragmentation and diversification of the Indian television marketplace, the thesis outlines public concerns about this generic development, and analyses the textual hybridity of this serial. In the context of these interrelated industrial, social and textual developments in television, the thesis then drawing on ethnographic perspectives illuminates the micro-social dynamics involved in the appeal of Kyunki, especially within a broad understanding of the nature of family viewing. Through its case study of the serial, the thesis quite explicitly demonstrates that appeal of even the apparently most ‘trivial’ television lies in the ways in which television contributes to political constructions of society through the discursive space it forms for viewers to forge social meanings and negotiate structures of social power. The ‘multidimensional’ approach the thesis appropriates and develops upon in pursuing this investigation, contributes significantly also to the emergent and evolving field of ‘third generation’ audience studies, particularly in its focus on family, more so in its observations of family dynamics and discourses. In addressing questions specifically about audiences’ relationship with the serial, the thesis drawing on the ethnographic interviews with viewers and their families, argues that for audiences the serial offers a representation of India simultaneously in notions of family and transcendent ideas of womanhood. Analysis of these notions further reveal how realms of the ideal, real and unreal form an important conceptual spectrum through viewers make sense and negotiate meanings, and contribute in politically constructing society. In this way demonstrating that appeal of this seemingly ‘trivial’ television programme is also in the space it provides for political negotiations, the thesis conclusively suggests that study of popular narratives, especially feminine narratives, must invariably be considered within the frame of ‘politics’ while also customarily with ‘pleasure’.

This creative thesis is written in two parts: Volume 1 is a novel and Volume 2 is the accompanying exegesis which explains the process of contextualising a school of philosophy’s politics within the novel. These volumes combine to build a new window onto contemporary theoretical debate regarding the sustainability of so-called liberal democracy. Volume 1, the novel, provides a fictionalised account of federal government involvement with the popular music industry in Australia during the 1990s. The story is told from the point of view of a newcomer to a music industry organisation funded by the federal government called the ‘Oz Rock Foundation’. This organisation is run by a former federal politician who maintains close links with his political colleagues still in government. When the newcomer discovers a young Aboriginal prisoner with exceptional musical talents, the former politician seizes this opportunity to help launch the Oz Rock Foundation in the ‘Year of the Indigenous Person’. This venture, however, has unexpected consequences which emerge as the story develops. Volume 2, the exegesis, employs a narrative framework to explain the process by which an analysis of philosopher Richard Rorty’s version of neopragmatism fed into the creation of the novel. Political issues raised by neopragmatism are thematically linked to fictional contexts informed by the history of government experimentation with the Australian music industry. The process is guided by questions designed to assess whether a neopragmatic version of liberal democracy is sustainable in this form. The novel is further shaped by its attempt to extend a particular tradition, within the genre of the political novel, that contextualises themes related to ‘natural rights’ as the foundation of liberal democracy. The exegesis, in its discussion of issues raised by the completed novel, then draws on existing research into the sustainability of democracy in order to synthesise an overall perspective. NOTE: Due to copyright arrangements with the publisher of Making Noises, the text of the novel (Volume 1) is not available as part of the digital version of this thesis. The novel was published in November 2006 by OverDog Press (Melbourne, Australia). The ISBN is: 9780975797921

This project is an investigation of various gambling environments. I wish to consider how these strategically designed, immersive and seductive sites seem to have an effect on the visitor. Typically the gaming environment offers an adult utopia and an other-worldly experience that is far removed from the everyday. I was attracted to researching the extreme, hyperreal gambling environments analysed by Jean Baudrillard as well as the common, suburban sites examined by Charles Livingstone. Although at first glance the styles of these two environments seem vastly different, what they have in common is they provide a simulacrum of reality where people can engage in the act of gambling. Whether the site is extraordinary or less extreme in style, the misery caused by gambling is a common experience. The performance As you cannot hear the sound of losing grew from this research, into an exploration of the melancholy that can be felt by the individual as a result of engaging with gambling environments. You cannot hear the sound of losing in these places; the reality of losing does not exist there. Within these sites we are likely to hear the cheers of a winner celebrating but, never the misery that can be caused by gambling. By exploring the gambling environment through performance, I intend to present how it works to affect those who visit it.

This study investigates aspects of the teaching and learning of intercultural nonverbal competence by university students majoring in English in Thailand and starts from the position that intercultural nonverbal competence is an important, but neglected area within English language teaching for international communication. Five aspects of nonverbal communication where there are pronounced differences between Thai and native English norms are investigated: facial expressions, eye contact and gaze, bodily communication, kinesics (touching), and vocalic communication. The study employs a range of qualitative and quantitative approaches in conducting classroom research on the learning and teaching of nonverbal communication within university EFL speaking and listening skills classes. Seventy-three second year undergraduate students majoring in English were randomly assigned to and participated in one of two different teaching interventions both of which involved the use of the same four American and Australian contemporary films. The experimental intervention involved explicit teaching of nonverbal communication and the other more traditional one provided exposure to the same native speaker interactions in the same four films, but with classroom activities focused on linguistic and pragmatic features arising from the films. Adopting a quasi-experimental pre and posttest design the study includes three phases of data collection: (1) pre teaching assessment, (2) teaching phase, and (3) post teaching assessment. The pre and post teaching assessments cover students’ attitudes towards, understanding of and ability to employ nonverbal communication when communicating in English in intercultural contexts. The post teaching assessment covers these same areas together with additional qualitative data collection about students’ experiences of participation in the study. Data analyses include use of analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) and within group t-tests. The study reveals that in comparison with students from the control group students from the experimental group who had participated in the explicit teaching of nonverbal communication had: (a) more positive attitudes towards nonverbal communication of English native speakers, (b) a higher level of understanding of nonverbal communication of English native speakers (c) a higher level of ability to apply nonverbal channels in communication appropriately in role playing interaction with an English native speaker, and, in addition, (d) most students from both groups felt positive about the opportunities that practising role plays and viewing contemporary English language films provided for them to enhance their intercultural acquisition of nonverbal competence in communicating in English with native speakers. Qualitative data supported the quantitative findings and also indicated that students in the experimental group had achieved a deeper and more explicit understanding of the role of nonverbal communication in interactions in English, whilst also demonstrating a strong sense of what might be acceptable in an English language context with English native speakers and what is acceptable with fellow Thais. Furthermore, the results highlight that it is not essential for nonnative speakers to stay/study abroad in English as native language speaking countries in order to improve their communicative and intercultural nonverbal competences to levels approximating that of native speakers. Films and role play, when used appropriately, may provide effective native speaker modeling and opportunities for practice.

This thesis includes two volumes: The novel, Swimming, in the first volume, is the fictional narrative of one woman's life and her experience of being childless. Kate, the protagonist of the novel, is not me though she has a number of similar experiences. Kate is the subject of her own narrative, a woman, whose existence presents an alternative figuration of the childless woman. The exegesis, the second volume, is a theoretical exploration and interrogation of the process of my feminist fiction writing as manifest in the writing of Swimming. Crucial to the development of both texts is the relationship between the real childless woman and the desire to represent the real childless woman's experience. In this sense real is used to denote the embodied (flesh and blood) individual woman without children. However, this notion of real is not what Stuart Hall refers to as 'a traditional' view of 'the subject' whereby the individual is seen to be 'fully endowed with consciousness; an autonomous and stable entity' (Hall 1997:55). In this thesis, the individual subject is understood to be complex and multiple; woman is understood to be a 'subject-in-process' (Braidotti 2002: 12); and subjectivity an 'ongoing construction, not a fixed point of departure or arrival from which one interacts with the world' (de Lauretis 1984: 159).

An original full-length theatrical play in three parts, Hand of Jane deals with themes of faith, family and responsibility to the past, and examines human spiritual evolution through the story of a father and daughter, and Jane, a mystical guide loosely based on Jane Goodall.

“The Piano Music of Jean Coultthard” provides a musicological assessment of keyboard literature by one of the leading composers in the history of Canadian music. Coulthard's piano works are discussed from aesthetic, historical, and analytical perspectives. Discussion of specific piano works is prefaced by a more general overview of aesthetic principles pertaining to Coulthard's compositional style (including a comparative study between Coulthard's music and the art of Emily Carr) and the question of a Canadian musical identity. The historical focus of the study relates to three main fields of inquiry: the development of Coulthard's distinctive style of piano writing from the early mature works of the 1940s to the more recent compositions of the 1980s and 1990s; the composer's historical position in twentieth-century music; and her lasting influence upon Canadian culture. Analytical issues addressed include Coulthard's innovative reworking of traditional musical forms and the characteristic features of her musical vocabulary and pianistic style. This study will demonstrate Coulthard's vital role in the development of piano music in Canada as well as her overall significance in twentieth-century music. / Graduate