To what degree is the viewer’s engagement with a television character triggered by the distinct narrative context of a programme? As with other types of storytelling (e.g. film, literature), engaging with a television character is an integral part of the overall experience of watching television. More specifically, television characters provide an emotional focal point for the audience. They invite us to imagine ourselves in their situation, challenge our sense of morality, and encourage us to consider how we would react if we were to encounter them in our everyday life. Whereas in the past relating to television characters has been somewhat of a private phenomenon, our relationship with television characters has become increasingly public within the last decade. The ever-growing recap culture around all types of television programmes on websites such as The AV Club, Uproxx, and IndieWire, and the lively discourse around television characters on social media (e.g. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) underline this increased public interest in television characters. Given the current popular interest in viewer engagement with television characters, it is surprising that only a limited number of scholarly works have previously explored this subject. Furthermore, most existing studies on the viewer/character relationship in contemporary television exhibit little variation in their focus on genre and character type. More specifically, as a result of the impact of The Sopranos (1999 - 2007) and Breaking Bad (2008 – 13) on popular culture, scholarly discourse around television characters has been dominated by studies on the morally corrupt antihero protagonists of contemporary television drama. Aside from a few notable exceptions (e.g. Gorton, 2009; Blanchet and Vaage, 2012; Mittell, 2015), most existing studies on viewer engagement with television characters ignore the way in which narrative characteristics inherent to the television medium influence the viewer/character relationship. The main aim of this thesis is to establish a medium- and programme-specific, text-based theoretical model for the study of viewer engagement with television characters. Various television formats are examined, including wrestling, contemporary drama, animated series, and late-night chat programmes. Also examined are the specific modes of engagement (e.g. antipathy, parasocial engagement, long-term viewer engagement) that shape the viewer-text relationship. The methodological approach is primarily based in cognitive media theory and television studies, however, studies on viewer engagement from a wide range of disciplines (e.g. literary studies, psychology, sociology) are also considered. By examining viewer engagement in this way, this thesis challenges and builds upon existing theoretical approaches, and seeks to provide the reader with a deeper understanding of a relationship that, despite its growing importance in the everyday lives of many television viewers, has thus far only received limited scholarly attention.

This thesis aims to ‘apply’, as it were, some of Jacques Derrida’s conclusions regarding the age-old distinction between ideal and material to an understanding of animality and how it emerges in texts. I propose the paleonym “arche-animality” to understand the workings of animality in texts. In the field of Literary Animal Studies, some challenging questions concerning animals in texts seem to mirror Derrida’s topics in his early works. On the one hand, we can conceptualise animals as radically different from humans due to their embodiment, but, on the other hand, we can take them to be only differently embodied subjectivities, not unlike the human’s as it is thought to be housed in the body. Both positions are fraught with problems and are, in fact, entangled with the relationship between materiality and ideality. These challenging questions – especially concerning animal embodiment – must be approached with an eye towards paleonymy, the procedure by means of which Derrida was able to propose arche-writing as the origin of both vulgar writing and speech. To demonstrate the appropriateness of paleonymy, I uncover the arche-animal in different texts of different genres and varying degrees of ‘animal presence’: a ‘theoretical’ text (Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo), a film (Darren Arofnosky’s Black Swan), a novel (Clarice Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark), and a poem (Ted Hughes’ ‘The Thought-Fox’).

Although Jeremiah is celebrated as the biblical prophet par excellence, the book that bears his name is deemed problematic. Courting scholarly attention with promises of a greater biographical and autobiographical content than other prophetic collections, the text is unable to satisfy the hopes of the majority of its commentators. Little concerned with thematic and chronological coherence, Jeremiah repeatedly frustrates readerly expectations-likened to a veil, it obscures as much as it reveals. Thus a dominant thread within scholarship has been a negotiation of the relationship between the veil and the prophet: securing the ipsissima verba of Jeremiah, and identifying where these have been since over sewn (scholars thereby adding to the stitch work in the process). Far from representing a curtain that is to be drawn back to reveal a prophet (and landscape) beyond, however, the book of Jeremiah offers something analogous to a theoretical event-more specifically, the theatre of Bertolt Brecht. Organising the thesis into three parts or acts I begin by considering the formal complexities of Jeremiah, likening its disruptions to the disjunctive style of Brecht's epic plays. As in the theatre of Brecht, the montage of jumps and curves in Jeremiah both foreground the texuality of representing and goad the reader into evaluation and comment. In the second act I focus on three prophetic dramas. As a distinct group of narratives, prophetic dramas are seldom studied, and rarely, if ever, brought into dialogue with contemporary theories of theatre. And so, by applying the insights of theatrical semiotics to the jug-breaking of Jeremiah 19, I can elucidate something of the mechanics of this way of making meaning. I then juxtapose this and the dramas of Jeremiah 13 and 18 with examples of Brecht's Lehstücke (learning plays) to represent the dramas as continuing rehearsals performed before an audience of interpreting reader-writers.

This PhD explores the experience of female journalists working in the Saudi Arabian press. It looks at the difficulties they face as women journalists, their motives for working in this area and their writings. The research discusses how the culture gender segregation in Saudi Arabia impacts upon Saudi media representations of gender stereotypes and the role of print media (the press) in exposing women’s issues to the public and forming public opinion. I utilised a media studies’ approach adopting an Islamic feminist perspective. I generated data from indepth interviews with seven Saudi female journalists working in Saudi press, who discuss female-related topics as well as content analysis of related press articles. The analysis indicated that the Saudi culture of extreme gender segregation has impacted on the experience of female journalists, particularly on their ability to compete with male journalists. As my analysis argues, my participants report experiencing female segregation and discrimination mainly affecting their pay, job opportunities, promotion, availability and access to information. My findings further suggest that the media in Saudi Arabia is the most direct venue for women to express their views and discuss their issues. In accordance with previous studies in the field, my study reveals that Saudi Arabian women interpret feminism within the boundaries of their specific culture and Islamic standpoint. Lastly, I discuss how current political, social and economic reforms in the region, which influence women’s status in the public arena, are reflected in the Saudi press.

The purpose of this dissertation is to reflect on the author’s published work in the field complementary and alternative medicine, specifically that produced between 1996 and 2005. It examines how the production of this work was influenced by the author’s previous and concurrent experience as a medical journalist and the methodological challenges arising from sourcing complementary and alternative medicine and framing for audiences of broadsheet newspapers and two books – The Which? Guide to Complementary Medicine and Alternative Answers to Asthma & Allergies. It explores how this work relates to scholarship in three key areas: the theory of sourcing, the theory of framing and the study of erroneous beliefs. The author demonstrates that a “perfect storm” – sociologically, culturally and economically – created a narrative that suited the new consumer-­‐driven cult of the empowered individual, which in turn led to most sectors of the print media becoming impervious to any real investigation of the subject.

As posthumanism has developed in the last twenty-five years there has been hesitation in elucidating a robust posthumanist engagement with the body. My thesis redresses this gap in the literature in three intertwined ways. First, it is a critical assessment of posthumanism broadly, focusing on how the body is read in its discourse and how there is a continuation of a humanist telos in terms which revolve around the body. Second, it is a philosophical interrogation, adaptation, and transformation of aspects of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, focusing its reading on Phenomenology of Perception and The Visible and the Invisible, with additional material drawn from his works on language, aesthetics, and ontology. Third, it is a critical analysis of four films drawn from that seemingly most posthumanist of genres, science fiction: Cronenberg's eXistenZ, Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Rusnak's The Thirteenth Floor, and Oshii's Ghost in the Shell. Science fiction is the meeting place of popular and critical posthumanist imaginaries as the vast majority of texts on posthumanism (in whatever form) ground their analyses in a science fiction of some kind. By reading posthumanism through the work of Merleau-Ponty I outline a posthumanist ontology of corporeality which both demonstrates the limitations of how posthumanism has done its analyses of the body and elucidates an opening and levelling not adequately considered in posthumanist analyses of the body. Following Merleau-Ponty I argue that there is a ‘belongingness of the body to being and the corporeal relevance of every being’, yet, the body is not the singular purview of the human. There are alternative embodiments and bodies which have been previously overlooked and that all bodies (be they embodied organically, technologically, virtually or otherwise) are corporeal.

This thesis attempts to develop a new model for a renewed concept of readability. The thesis begins by discussing the rationale for carrying out this research. Next, the extensive literature around the topic of readability is reviewed. The literature suggests that most research into readability has stemmed from a positivist paradigm, and has used quantitative methods to assess text comprehensibility. This approach has been widely criticised and, recently, more qualitative methods stemming from an interpretive paradigm have been employed. It seems that both quantitative and qualitative methods have strengths and limitations. Therefore, the research I have carried out has explored the concept of readability by combining these two research approaches. The data collection methods include readability formulae; text feature analyses; miscue analyses; retellings and interviews. This research has been conducted in the United Kingdom and involved 16 male and 16 female pupils with an age range from 6 to 11 years old. All the participants were fluent readers. Data were analysed using; (1) six online readability formulae - ATOS (1997); Dale-Chall (1948); Flesch-Kincaid (1948); FOG (1952); SMOG (1969); and Spache (1953); (2) Reading Miscue Inventory (Goodman, Watson & Burke, 2005); (3) Judging Richness of Retellings (Irwin & Mitchell, 1983); (4) text feature analysis forms; and (5) a cross-interview analysis approach. Two computer software programmes i.e Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS 17) and Qualitative Data Analysis (Nvivo 7) were used to organise and analyse the quantitative and qualitative data. The findings suggest that the concept of readability is influenced by both reader and text factors. The reader factors involve a complex relationship of nine embedded elements within the reader, namely interest, prior knowledge, attitude, reading ability, motivation, purpose of reading, engagement, age and gender. The text factors include eight elements, these being the physical features of the text, genre, content, author, linguistic difficulties, legibility, illustrations and organization of the text. This research comes to the conclusion that the concept of readability is a complex matching process involving the dynamic interaction between both reader and text factors and bound by certain contexts.

This thesis is the first major investigation into the representations of Vodou within the cultural productions of Britain and America. It also opens up opportunities for further research to be undertaken in the representations of Vodou, Haiti and the culture and religions of other Caribbean countries. This thesis explores the representations of 'Voodoo,' the widely accepted and recognised term for the re-imagined religion, in Britain and America since 1850. The history of the Caribbean and Haiti is examined before considering the influence that the religion of Haitian Vodou has had on cultural production. Through a historical perspective the thesis will consider the evolution of Vodou during the horrors of slavery. The historiographic representations form the basis of the productions and are explored to contextualise Vodou in the British and American imagination. All genres of literature are examined, from the first mention of Vodou in the eighteenth century through to the present day. This is followed by an examination of the cultural reproductions of Vodou in film, animation, theatre and television to explore the diversity of the representations. The wider societal influences are considered throughout this work to contextualise the productions of 'Voodoo'. This thesis argues that the cultural reproductions of Vodou since 1850 have not changed greatly, despite various efforts to redress the misrepresentations, they remain rooted in colonialism. It will argue that many of the cultural productions are reliant on previous representations. They do not in the majority introduce authenticity, instead opting for the more sensational approach. Many of the representations will be shown to be derogatory to the religion, culture and people of Haiti and the diaspora. This is despite Vodou as a religion having survived, gained strength and continuing to thrive in the twenty-first century.

Through an analysis of the work of Virginia Woolf and T.W. Adorno’s theory of the aesthetic, this dissertation seeks to develop a poetics of criticism that takes account of the philosophy of the non-identical in subjective experience. As the subversion of the positivist and subjectivist tendencies of identity thinking, Adorno’s negative dialectic is read here in parallel with Woolf’s work as an example of a discourse that preserves the particularity of experience. Much of Woolf’s writing about music is in the form of diary entries, letters and notes or jottings and is singularly unfinished. Her writing about music pushes her to the extremes of essayistic practice where she is forced to improvise and invent a musical-critical voice. This dissertation argues that subjectivity and aesthetic experience are constructed negatively in Woolf’s diaries, letters and essays and by reading her tendency to resist describing musical experiences as a resistance to the domination of conceptual subsumption, I hope to show that Woolf’s writing could offer a new perspective on criticism. The present work attempts to develop a three-fold thesis, the presentation of which will constitute a poetics of criticism. Firstly, Woolf’s attempts to write a critical selfhood actually serve as a critique of transcendental subjectivity and undermine the ideology of a priori subjectivity. Secondly, Woolf’s essays complement work done by Adorno on genre theory which asserts that contradiction remains essential to the critical essay, contradiction which secures the identity of negative dialectics and a contradiction that can simultaneously be read as fundamental to the architectonics of a modernist subjectivity. Woolf’s essays, therefore, will be read for their potential status as a means of critique. And thirdly, the technique of parataxis as a form of writing that Adorno thought best expressed the inaccessibility of objectivity will be shown to be decisive in analyzing Woolf’s fragments. What I hope to assemble, therefore, is a constellation of ideas that map several points ofconnection between Adorno and Woolf.By effecting a salvaging of Woolf’s musical marginalia this thesis argues that ostensibly ill-informed or naïve testimony can be given legitimacy within contemporary music criticism. In addition, this thesis presents all the references to music found in Woolf’s diaries and letters, and, as such, the appendices found at the back of the dissertation constitute not only the first attempt to bring this material together, but are also presented in such a way so as to reinforce the paratactical nature of Woolf’s writing about music. That is to say, structurally, the appendices appear as they appear in Woolf’s original texts, and this thesis has, self-consciously, tried to resist the conceptual overdetermination of these fragments. This structural consideration implies that this dissertation fulfils a performative, as well an analytical function.

This thesis asks the question: what does it mean to “discern the body” (1 Cor. 11:29)? Answering this begins with the question’s origin in the sacramental context of a particular Christian community’s attempt to observe what became known as the Eucharist. In their physicality, sacraments act as reminders that theological concepts, while they systematise experience and knowledge, can never be simply abstract; theology must never forget the particular, discrete nature of human beings, the separation of creatures, the otherness that allows true plurality and mutuality. My thesis is divided in three parts, to address bodies and their stories in theory, literary art, and sacramental liturgy. The first part of the thesis offers a critical reading of various theologies of body and story, applying to them insights from feminist epistemology concerning situated knowledge. The critique examines the work of Graham Ward, Stanley Hauerwas, Marcella Althaus-Reid, and Paul Ricoeur, looking at the way that even their attempts to take the body into account tend to downplay the concreteness of particular people and their stories. The second part of the thesis explores the way that literature handles the problems of particularity and universality, looking at specific stories in specific novels, and examining the way they treat bodies and the meeting of bodies. I address five novels. In conversation with Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje, I discuss the importance of touch in defining meaning. With A Map of Glass, by Jane Urquhart, I look at bodies as tactile maps and geographies of memory. Fugitive Pieces, by Anne Michaels, leads me to a discussion of the place of artistic form in the determination of meaning both for the body and for literature. The Man on a Donkey, by H. F. M. Prescott, leads to reflections upon disjunctions in bodies as various narratives make claims upon them. The discussion of Godric, by Frederick Buechner, centres upon personal identity being constructed physically, artistically and relationally through proximity with others. The third part investigates the nature of sacraments and sacramental theology as a place of attending to both the abstract and the particular, to the person—seeking a geography of love. To do this, I begin with a discussion of the search for a normative liturgical pattern as exemplified by Dom Gregory Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy, focusing on the consequences for acknowledging the unruliness of the materiality of bodies. I then examine the approach of Gordon W. Lathrop, who uses the image of the map for describing liturgy. But his use of this metaphor construes the liturgical map as a given, turning away from interactive, creative possibilities. As a response, I look to the theologian Charles Winquist, who writes about the particularity of love. Finally, I bring together my reflections from the first two parts of the thesis to make suggestions about the liturgical body: that it is discerned by paying attention to the stories that the body carries, to the relationships in which bodies are implicated and to their locations, and to the vulnerabilities manifested by love and grief, by care.