This self-study, written in narrative form, considers the design of a “pedagogy of meaning” (Cooper, 2009) that supports children’s identity-construction, as the children uniquely “appear” in the classroom. The author shares this process with the children in her Grade 1 classroom. As part of the children’s “appearance” in the classroom, “voices” which have not often been heard come to be shared in meaningful/meaning-making ways. Also, in the course of this pedagogical design process, the author explores the construction of her own “teacher identities”. The study is theoretically inspired by the Reggio Emilia approach; in particular, the central tenet of the “image of the child” as competent, capable, and resourceful (Rinaldi, 1993). This is a postmodern image of the child brought into being through the process of telling and interpreting stories of past and present. This “image of the child” is utilized as a guiding concept as the author endeavours to conceptualize and enact her own interpretation of a pedagogy of meaning in her Grade 1 classroom context. A pedagogy of meaning is conceptualized as a relational and malleable construct negotiated between the teacher and children and among the children themselves, enriched by the participants’ individual and shared identities, contexts, and experiences.

This thesis investigates the influence of hybrid theatre practices, media and technology on contemporary dance performance and questions if dance is endangered by developments in hybrid cultures. Through a consideration of dance genealogies, the thesis suggests that notions of identity play a significant role in power structures within interdisciplinary relationships. / Contemporary dance has gone through many changes in the last century. In particular, contemporary aspects of performance have demonstrated that the body is not the only site for dance. Why dance, is a culmination of questions that surfaced during the course of my own practice. It refers to questions that many dancers have asked themselves in the years following the arrival of postmodernism, when notions of body identity confronted conceptual possibilities in the terrain of interdisciplinary and mediated spaces. / Incorporating my own experience as a practitioner and observer with theoretical perspectives in the field, I have attempted to give voice to some of the ambiguities and paradoxes that inhabit dance and its hybrid postmodern affiliates. I make use of various genealogies that have led to hybrid and interdisciplinary interactions as a means to define relationships of power that exist within interdisciplinarity. The use of case studies and examples of performances from Europe and Australia provide material through which to examine performance methodologies that have arisen out of interdisciplinary practice. My reading and suggestions express the concern that disciplines outside of the body may have become more important as defining element in dance. Through an examination of new ways that dancers now speak through media other than their bodies, the thesis examines what affects this has on the discipline of dance and questions if notions of disciplinarity are still relevant. While it has become necessary to reconstruct, reinterpret and demystify the body, the outcome suggests that autonomy rests with recognition of the body as the site for further development within negotiated spaces.

This thesis examines the reinvention and resurgence of the monologue as a contemporary performance mode. It focuses on four pioneering practitioners: Laurie Anderson, Spalding Gray, Karen Finley and Anna Deavere Smith. The study reviews historical developments in monologue and analyses contemporary innovations made to the form. It also responds to debate on the use of postmodern aesthetic techniques in performance, as a means of critically engaging with and commentating on Western, specifically American, culture and politics. The hypothesis of this study is that monologue, as it is examined in this work, is a biopolitical form. It is biopolitical, as this analysis will show, in the sense that it is a linguistic, communicational and creative response to the conditions of global capitalism in the West. The study argues that the term monologue is increasingly inadequate to the discussion of these new forms of solo speech and performance and proffers the term “post-monologue” as a means of furthering consideration of the monologue beyond the terms of current understandings. It opens the way towards future manifestations of the form that offer critically effective, and affective, commentary on world events.

Thesis (DD(Science of Religion and Missiology)--University of Pretoria, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

Orientador: Ubiratan D'Ambrosio / Banca: Roberto Alves Monteiro / Banca: Maria do Carmo Domite-Mendonça / Banca: Antônio Vicente Marafioti Garnica / Banca: Antônio Carlos Carrera de Souza / Resumo: Este trabalho pretende pensar a etnomatemática diante das crises do contemporâneo, sobretudo as crises do conhecimento, tematizadas por discursos pós-modernos. Para tanto, discute a questão do conhecimento a partir de possibilidades abertas pelo pensamento de Nietzsche, buscando colocar tal pensamento frente a concepções cartesianas de conhecimento, hegemônicas na modernidade. A questão do espaço e da espacialidade é tomada, pois, desde esta discussão, que é a base para a investigação de campo empreendida junto a jovens e adolescentes moradores de regiões de Laranjal do Jari, Amapá, que têm suas práticas sócio-espaciais desenvolvidas sobre palafitas: moram, estudam, trabalham, divertem-se, namoram, encontram-se e desencontram-se em uma cidade construída sobre palafitas. As crises do conhecimento estão na base da investigação - que se quer interpretativa -: de seus procedimentos às análises e busca de compreensão, tanto de questões de espacialidades e etnomatemática do espaço, quanto do cotidiano sócio-espacial dos participantes da pesquisa. / Abstract: This dissertation aims at thinking ethnomathematics vis-à-vis contemporary crisis in knowledge mainly as it is viewed under the perspective of postmodern discourse. This is achieved by contrasting possibilities opened according Nietzsche's perspectives with Cartesian's point of view about Knowledge which is viewed as hegemonic in the modernity. In this dissertation the question of space and spatiality is taken as a background to present the debate, mentioned before, which is empirically supported by a field work research among youngsters and adolescents living in Laranjal do Jari, in the Amapá state - Brazil, a place almost entirely built over palafits. They were chosen as subjects in the research due to their social and spatial experience resulting from their living in houses constructed over palafits at the Jari River where they live, study, work, have fun and fall in love performing their social interactions. Knowledge and its Crisis constitute the theoretical grounds of the investigation. It is undertaken under an interpretive approach ranging from the data collection to their analysis in order to achieve comprehension of issues both in ethnomathematics as a conceptual body and in the social and spatial cotidianity of the research subjects. / Doutor

North America, the United States in particular, has established an unique and distinct connection to the the wildspaces outside of urban environments. The two spaces, urban and wilderness, are placed in opposition to one another in a sliding valuation scale that is based on the degradation experienced in these urban areas, due to industrialized capitalist means of production, by the inhabitants. These effects are the source of both literary and visual art protests that originate in the 19th century in both generations of the Hudson River School painters, American pastoral writing, philosophy, and photographs. These romanticized views of natural space and out interactions with natural spaces create a deeply sentimental and mythic connection to America's wilderness. This spurs the creation of the National and State Parks and Forests systems that preserve and embalm the idealistic settings for industrialized man to commune with wilderness. These spaces, however, are inherently flawed in their construction and execution. This fact began my investigation into what American society presents as natural, or in some cases, more natural, in the Parks and public lands systems and natural history museums. I argue that the three works presented in my thesis are linked to the greater American pastoral art tradition, but engage wild spaces as a means to create a critical discourse into the authenticity of the ideals established by previous authors and artists. This claim is supported historically through links in methodology and subject matter, but depart from the Romantic and Modernist systems of representation in that my work reveals the manipulated structures that construct both the parks systems and the natural history museums.

This project examines some of the most notable fiction of contemporary American writer Paul Auster through the postmodern lens of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s rhizome. Auster’s novels often feature characters that are also writers, characters that resurface in subsequent novels, and characters that bear a resemblance to Paul Auster himself. This thesis uses the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari to better understand the significance of these puzzling characters. Ultimately, the model of the rhizome reveals a particular connectivity between Auster’s works underpinned by multiplicities, refrains, and a dislocation of origins.

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