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This thesis explores the renewal process within the Moderate Party from a postmodern perspective, focusing on epideictic rhetoric and theories of pseudo-events. By analyzing the party's strategic repositioning and communication methods, the study examines how the Moderates reshaped their public image and relationship with the electorate. Utilizing examples from political statements and internal documents, the thesis demonstrates how staged events and media appearances were used to direct public discourse. It also highlights how this renewal work contributed to shaping the party's identity and strategy in an era characterized by the increasing significance of media and image-focused political communication. This study thereby contributes to a deeper understanding of the nature of contemporary political communication and its effects on democratic processes and political engagement.

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<p>This study explored the relationship that HIV-positive women have constructed with their bodies both pre-HIV and post-HIV diagnosis. The research was based on feminist and postmodernist theoretical perspectives and narrative based qualitative interviews with six HIV-positive women residing in Ontario. The women’s narratives formed the basis of the data analysis. The findings revealed stories of women’s complex relationships with their bodies that were influenced by cultural discourse of the female body, change to their bodies post-HIV, side effects of HIV medications, a yearning to change their bodies with cosmetic procedures, and HIV-related stigma. While women’s stories illustrated reflections from the past and present, their stories also moved non-linearly through time. These stories challenged the idea of a grand truth about how women experience their bodies and suggested women’s relationship with their bodies is an active and fluid process. The theoretical perspectives of this research and the stories of HIV-positive women provided implications for future social work practice and research. Feminist and postmodern approaches are encouraged in future research and practice to promote non-silencing and non-pathologizing experiences for HIV-positive women. The stories shared by women suggested that the dominant model of female beauty affects the relationship constructed with their bodies and shapes the lives of women both pre-HIV and post-HIV diagnosis. These stories validated that body image concerns are indeed present in women living with HIV, just as they are present for HIV-negative women.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

<p>This thesis attempts to address the notion of unreliable narration and its treatment tn the postmodern novel. More specifically, it seeks to identify a number of characteristics shared by novels which offer fictional treatments of historical biographies and autobiographies. These characteristics include the use of dual ontological narrative structures, self-reflexivity, the deconstruction of authority and the genre in question, and finally, the existence of psychological truth in the narrators.</p> <p>Chapter One briefly addresses the historical development of unreliable narration, examining works from Henry Fielding through to postmoderntsm. Chapter Two begins the Inquiry into specific works by examining Michael Ondaatje's autobiographical novel, Running in the Family, and the way that the narrator fabricates a relationship with the father he has barely known in order to cope with the experience of loss. Chapter Three concerns Timothy Findley's The Wars, and the deconstruction of authority in the portrayal of history through a narrator who, because of emotional involvement with his/her subject, actively fictionalizes what ts ostensibly intended to be a faithful historical account. Finally, Chapter Four examines Carol Shields' The Stone Diaries, and its narrator's active invention of emotional experience in order to impose meaning on what she perceives as a meaningless existence.</p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

A two-fold analysis of the vocal ornamentation in Handel's aria, "He was despised" from Messiah, was conducted employing objective and subjective forms of listening practice associated with the analysis of recordings methodology. It is this author's hypothesis that prosody, born of the semiotic processes of rhythm, pitch and accent, and which is also reflective of the subjective understanding of the performer, will be present during the moment of an ornament--if it is present at all in any performance. Ornamentation is shown to be an entry into the world of subjectivity in Baroque vocal performance practice as well as a window into the oral tradition and the primacy of the singer's expressiveness that relates back to the Italian school to which Handel subscribed. The method of study in this monograph consists of examining scholarly writings, scores, notations and most importantly, applying listening practice to 38 different renditions of "He was despised," executed by female altos or by countertenors, under the direction of various conductors, dating from 1927 through 2006. The first of two listening practices is an analysis of recordings to identify and review the nature of the non-notated sung ornaments found in the recordings. The author develops a system of defining and categorizing the types and units of non-notated, aurally observed vocal ornaments executed in each performance. In the second phase of this study, the author incorporates a postmodern philosophical approach and notes her own subjective experiences during the analysis of recordings. This phase examines the idea that prosodic elements are associated with the subjective experience of emotional meaning, elucidation of text, and illumination of subtext in this aria from Handel's Messiah. Results include noteworthy findings about the interplay of the singer's subjectivity with ornamentation in affecting the listener's subjective reaction to the performance (e.g., narrator's viewpoint, beautifying versus emphasizing subtext). In conclusion, the author explores the relationship between a performer's prosodic and non-prosodic executions of ornamentation and proposes specific recommendations to singers who wish to execute ornamentation in a manner that is both historically informed as well as prosodically expressive of subtext. / Music Performance