A key aim of this study is to shed light on the representation of coloured women with reference to racial passing, using fictive characters depicted in Sarah Gertrude Millin’s (1924) God’s Stepchildren,Zoë Wicomb’s (2006) Playing in the Light, and Pat Stamatélos’s (2005) Kroes, as presented by these three racially distinct female South African authors.Since I propose that literature provides a link between a subjective history and the under-represented narratives from the margins, I use literature to reimagine these. I analyse the ways in which the authors present ‘hybrid’ identities within their characters in different ways, and provide an explanation and contextual basis for the exploration of the theme of ‘passing for and as white’ within South Africa’s complex history. I provide a sociological explanation of the act of racial passing in South Africa with reference to the United States by incorporating Nella Larsen’s (1929) Passing. Since the analyses will concentrate on coloured females within the texts, gendered identity and female sexuality and stereotypes will be the focus. I look at the act and agent of passing, the role of raced and gendered performance in giving meaning to social identities, and the way in which the female body is constructed in racial terms in order to confer identity. Tracing the historical origins of coloured identity and coloured female identity, I interrogate this colonial, post-colonial, apartheid and post-apartheid history by employing a feminist lens. A combination of postcolonial feminist discourse analysis, sociological inquiry and feminist narrative analysis are therefore the methods I use to achieve my research aims. / Magister Artium - MA

This dissertation presents an investigation into the notion of the freak in the guise of exotic characters as these appear in the strange creature-figures in Jane Alexander’s (b. 1959) installation artwork African Adventure (1999-2002). The installation artwork reveals issues pertaining to the way in which the exotic nature of the freak is made manifest in its hybrid spatio-temporal nature, with reference also to the understanding that freaks are often presented as strange yet awesome consumer objects. Alexander’s view of art and her oeuvre are contextualised within the South African milieu which is characterised by change, and laced with utopian as well as dystopian sentiments. The interpretation of African Adventure is theoretically entrenched in certain key concepts: the freak, the exotic, and hybridity, as these are made manifest in the reading of the characters, time and place presented in the installation artwork as allegorical reflection of contemporary South African society. The exploration of the work’s spatio-temporal dimensions are guided by establishing a link between, on the one hand, the desire for experiencing the thrill of the unusual (both in terms of a perspective of a colonial safari as well as the contemporary tourist gaze) and, on the other hand, a number of problematic issues in contemporary South African society. I demonstrate that the South African landscape, people and most likely also history are regarded as exotic – with the freakish associations this implies – also because post-apartheid South Africa has the status of a rarity that can be experienced as an adventure landscape. I further demonstrate how the freak’s exotic figuration ironically reverses the experience of empowered looking, with reference here to the notion of spectacle. In a space where contradiction is exposed for contemplation, this ironic reversal in its hybrid embodiment is understood as a space of reconstitution. In this manner, the presumed notion of a stable South African collective is challenged; South African society comprising of so many hybrid identities is rather understood to be the sum of contestible information where the possibility of fragmented experiences of chaos and reconciliation can coexist. As such, cultural reconstitution and renewal are not based on the exoticism of multiculturalism, but on the articulation of a culture’s hybridity. / MA (History of Art), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

The tourism industry is particularly reliant on the use of imagery to create a brand for a destination or attraction in order to effectively market its product. In the case of Indigenous tourism, a paradox often exists between maintaining a level of recognition and familiarity that mirror the expectations of the public imagination, and conveying a representation that is locally meaningful and emblematic. Investigation into the visual representation and communication of identity through tourism is a means to illustrate three overlapping issues that are prevalent throughout the literature on Indigenous tourism. These are: control, authenticity, and hybridity. This research project addresses these issues through an extensive review of anthropological and tourism-related literature and its application to the specific case study of one Indigenous tourism business, the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre (NDCC), owned and operated by the Osoyoos Indian Band (OIB) in Osoyoos, British Columbia (BC), Canada. Semiotic and visual analyses are used to elucidate the messages about OIB identity communicated through the Centre’s visuals, in order to bring the example of the OIB and NDCC into conversation with the larger issues found within Indigenous tourism. / Graduate

This M.A. thesis is an autoethnographic study of my personal experiences teaching Grade Two after ten years of teaching middle school. It takes place over a five year span from 2007 to 2012. It is presented as a series of fictional, performative, and narrative pieces, where the reader is invited along on my journey to discover who I am (becoming) as Teacher, and the (re)invention of myself as Teacher. The study takes a creative, arts- based approach, presented as a curriculum lab book that is formatted differently than a traditional thesis. On the right side of each page is a novelette comprised of narratives, stories, dialogue, and poems; on the left side of the page are literature links and implications, definitions, reflections, and recursive segments. Areas that are highlighted in this thesis include living in the hybridity of culture, dwelling in the spaces of planned and lived curriculum, and the pedagogy of reinvention. The focus of this research story is reflection and practice, ways to approach change in our pedagogy, and to demonstrate autoethnography as a methodology for the exploration of Teacher identity. / Graduate

Je commencerai par la question de savoir s’il est oui ou non souhaitable, nécessaire ou même possible d’élaborer une théorie unifiée d’intermédialité ou de transmédialité. J’aimerais pour l’instant laisser cette question en suspens et rappeler que nous avons assisté à des tentatives remarquables ces dernières années, ou du moins depuis les années 1980. Passer en revue les publications les plus réussies des vingt dernières années nous montre, qu’à cause des interrelations complexes et du chevauchement d’une grande variété et diversité de stratégies médiatiques et de formes de production, la tentative voulant présenter de façon claire les différenciations et les fonctions des relations intermédiales et transmédiales, a conduit dans certains cas à des définitions similaires, certains termes ayant des constituants similaires voire même identiques. Ces tentatives incluent tous types de définitions d’intermédialité et de transmédialité (ou dans une certaine mesure des termes comme "références aux médias" ("Medienbezüge"), "combinaison de médias" ("Medienkombination") et "changement de médias" ("Medienwechsel") (Rajewsky 2002 : 18 sqq.) ou le mélange de termes issus de la critique littéraire, comme l'intertextualité ou la "dialoguicité" avec des termes de la théorie médiatique.

Das Ziel meines Beitrags im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung ist ein doppeltes: zunächst die Beschreibung und Interpretation von Repräsentationsformen der Andersheit im Kontext von Hybriditätsprozessen und im Kontext der Formen und der Auswirkungen der Globalisierung in Lateinamerika; und zweitens die Herausarbeitung von Hybridisierungsstrategien, von semiotisch-anthropologischen Entwürfen eines altaritären und differenten Kulturmodells, das für eine kulturelle Region im Zeitalter der Globalisierung Bedeutung hat. Es geht also um translatologisch-kommunikative Strategien, wobei Translation nach Gómez Peña rekodifizieren beziehungsweise "borderizing" bedeutet – und nicht übersetzen. Denn die großen permanenten und unaufhaltsamen Migrationen gepaart mit der Globalisierung ergeben eine zunehmende Verflechtung zwischen dem sogenannten "Eigenen" und dem sogenannten "Fremden", werfen Fragen über die Legitimität und Adäquatheit, ja zeitliche Angemessenheit dieser Konzepte auf und erzwingen eine Revision und neue Bestimmung von weiteren Konzepten wie Differenz, Identität, Nation und Kultur. Das Oppositionspaar, das "Eigene" und das "Fremde", kann und soll nicht mehr so stehen bleiben, denn es ist epistemologisch, historisch und kulturell Kind eines kolonialen und imperialen Zeitalters, welches schon unwiderruflich vergangen zu sein schien.

<p><italic>Composers on the Decks</italic> is comprised of three related chapters: an original composition for amplified chamber ensemble and laptop DJ, <italic>Alleys Of Your Mind</italic>; an extended article entitled "Composers on the Decks: Hybridity of Place and Practice among Composer-DJs Gabriel Prokofiev, Mason Bates, Ari Benjamin Meyers and Brandt Brauer Frick"; and an archive of edited interviews of the four primary research subjects. Chapter 1 is the author's artistic contribution. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the emerging practices of "club classical" and what I am calling "instrumental-electronic dance music" in what may be the first academic study to examine the latter and its connections with the former.</p><p><italic>Alleys of Your Mind</italic> is a work for seven wind instruments, soprano and laptop DJ composed as social dance music, intended to be performed in a nightclub. Its repetitive style, electronic dance beats and long-form instrumental writing create a musical hybrid of classical compositional techniques and electronic dance music (EDM). The work contains three movements: the first and longest movement is paced at a dance tempo of 124 beats-per-minute; the second movement at half of that speed, 62 beats-per-minute; and Movement 3 returns to the original tempo. The movements are performed without pause and leave generous space for the DJ to improvise with audio effects and an extended interlude in Movement 2. In addition, <italic>Alleys Of Your Mind</italic> has a documentary dimension: audio samples of medical machinery and voices, recorded by the composer during his recovery in a neuroscience intensive care unit, feature in the second and third movements. </p><p>Chapter 2 introduces the related practices of "club classical" and "instrumental-EDM," explaining the musical connections between contemporary classical and EDM and interpreting the hybrid social environments where this music lives. The first section deals with the club classical phenomenon in the practices of composer-DJs Gabriel Prokofiev and Mason Bates, and presenters such as Yellow Lounge. Prokofiev leads Nonclassical Records and hosts monthly club nights in London, during which live sets of recent classical works alternate with sets from Nonclassical's resident DJs. The label's releases adapt classical music to an EDM format, featuring new classical compositions and electronic remixes of these works. Bates presents Mercury Soul, a party in nightclubs that links DJ sets of EDM with live classical sets via composed, electro-acoustic interludes; these nights involve a director, conductor, and a chamber ensemble from a major symphony. Yellow Lounge situates older classical music in nightclubs and employs DJs who spin classical works between live sets. Ari Benjamin Meyers composes instrumental-EDM, music that features classically influenced composition with a dance focus, and has performed it with his Redux Orchestra in Berlin's late night dance clubs from 2005-2012. Brandt Brauer Frick, an EDM trio, formed an 11-piece ensemble of mostly classical instruments that plays their orchestrated techno-like tracks in clubs and concert halls. </p><p>Using social and performance analysis, the chapter describes these phenomena as musical and social hybridity. Club classical and instrumental-EDM evince a desire on the part of event planners and classically trained composers to connect on a more physical and social level with their audience. Many of the composers and presenters express a wish that through these practices, classical music can expand beyond the concert hall and potentially see a demographic change in its audience over time. The chapter also delves into the narrow demographics of the classical-EDM scene, the difficulties of instrumental-EDM, and situates the author's dissertation composition, <italic>Alleys Of Your Mind</italic>, and its presentation at the Duke Coffeehouse, within the greater practice of instrumental-EDM. </p><p>Chapter 3 presents edited versions of the author's interviews with the study's four primary research subjects. This documentation, and the dissertation as a whole, is paired with a website, <underline>composersonthedecks.org</underline>, which provides additional information, photographs, links, and audio and video of <italic>Alleys Of Your Mind</italic>.</p> / Dissertation

This research investigates the music-theatre phenomenon for the purpose of: clarifying how that differs from more traditional forms of musical theatre, i.e., Opera and Broadway musical; discussing its aesthetic bases; explicating its modes of operation in relation to both music and theatre. The writing is structured in three main parts. The first concern of the discussion is to clarify the connection between music and performance. To that end, Part One starts by reflecting on the nature of music and how its perception has been changed by modern technology, throwing live performance into question. The notions of physicality, embodiment, and gesture are then invoked in order to re-position music firmly within the performing arts. Part Two then delves into music-theatre touching on issues of terminology, artistic scope, positioning, production, funding, structures, institutions. Part Three, finally, offers some conclusions and recommendations. The Thesis is then followed by a commentary to the portfolio of compositions accompanying this research. The musical scores and audio-visual material relative to the works therein discussed are included on 1 separately bound volume.

This thesis analyses the issue of sovereignty in the Arab Middle Eastern context with a special reference to three cases: Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq. The basic argument of this thesis is the inapplicability of Western sovereignty in the related cases. The thesis will discuss that Western sovereignty which was brought to the region has been limited by certain facts. Instead, what we have is a hybrid sovereignty model in which both modern and primordial patterns co-exist. The thesis will also trace the history of Western sovereignty in the region since the early periods of colonization and modernization, and will seek to answer such questions as how the failure of colonially brought Western sovereignty affects Arab politics in different levels.

Chineseness at the crossroads examines how Chineseness is negotiated by diasporic Chinese women in Australia. I question the essentialist notions of Chineseness by deploying Homi Bhabha's theory of liminality. This concept of being neither here nor there helped me examine the women's ambiguous experiences of acceptance and rejection, within and across marginal and dominant Australian circles. My position disrupts the binaric frames that divide the old from the new, and the eastern from the western practices for cultural appropriation. It recognises instead the past and the present in the creation of new but familiar versions of Chineseness. I argue that essentialist norms are commuilicated through cultural semantics to inform how Chineseness is rehearsed. I assert that liminality exposes the power structures that inform these cultural semantics by disrupting the naturalised norms. I posit that the diasporic women's awareness of these interdependent processes enables them to question their practices and ideologies. I used an autoethnographic technique to collapse the divide between the researcher and the researched. It created a liminal space between the researcher and the researched. This subverted norms of the researcher as the archaeologist of knowledge by enabling the other women's narratives to tell their stories alongside mine. This methodological frame also serves as a prism to examine the intersections of gender, sexuality, family, relationships, language, education, class, age, and religion with Chineseness in the lives of the 39 Malaysian and Singaporean women interviewed. My results indicate that Chineseness is precarious and indeterminate, and specific to the particular moments of articulation at the crossroads of geopolitical and socioeconomic factors. The versions of Chineseness rehearsed are complexly influenced by the various cultural semantics that impact on the women's negotiations of who they are as diasporic Chinese women in Australia. I conclude with a discussion of how these results challenge current curriculum and pedagogical practices in English classrooms. I argue that a re-examination of these practices will contribute to a more inclusive Australia.