Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 172-180).

Thèse (doctorat)--Université de Caen. / "Bibliographie": p. [vii]-xii.

Based on the author's thesis, Würzburg. / Bibliography: p. [493]-513.

"This study is predicated on a strong belief that the gender make-up of African parliamnets must relfect the gender demographics of African states. It is only when that is achieved that the concepts of equality, non-discrimination and democracy can gain their true meaning. As a departure point, the study makes a case that statistically women are under-represented across the overwhelming majority of African parliaments. The study asserts that the under-representation is prevalent amid the existence of international, regional and domestic instruments, all providing for women's right to representation in decision-making processes. Thus, the study demonstrates that there is a gap between de jure and de facto representation. The study then argues that the convoluted ideology of patriarchy, sacrosanct cultures, inviolable religions, the constructed public/private dichotomy, low levels of education, and the negative impact of globalisation all act in concert to deny African women their rightful place in decision-making institutions, particluarly parliaments. In a bid to investigate how this can be reserved, the study explores the Rwandan and South African models for purposes of gaining insights on how they have contrived to reach and surpass the critical mass of women in their parliaments. These two models demonstrate that a combination of temporary special measures and gender mainstreaming are effective tools for emancipating women and ensuring their representation in parliaments. These have to be buttressed by strong legal and institutioanl frameworks, which operate in a conducive socio-political environment." -- Abstract. / Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2006. / Prepared under the supervision of Dr. Ben Twinomugisha at the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC), Makerere University, Faculty of Law, Kampala, Uganda / http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html / Centre for Human Rights / LLM

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Representation theory is a field of study within abstract algebra that originated around the turn of the 19th century in the work of Frobenius on representations of finite groups. More recently, Hopf algebras -- a class of algebras that includes group algebras, enveloping algebras of Lie algebras, and many other interesting algebras that are often referred to under the collective name of ``quantum groups'' -- have come to the fore. This dissertation will discuss generalizations of certain results from group representation theory to the setting of Hopf algebras. Specifically, our focus is on the following two areas: Frobenius divisibility and Kaplansky's sixth conjecture, and the adjoint representation and the Chevalley property. / Mathematics

This thesis applies Nicolas Bourriaud’s concept of ‘relational aesthetics’ to the development of site-specific theatre practice. Focussing on the Arches arts centre in Glasgow, the aim is to suggest ways in which a performance aesthetic can be developed that uses, makes evident and contributes to what Bourriaud describes as the ‘space of relations’ that exists within every site. Employing a practice-as-research methodology in order to develop a ‘relational theatre practice’, the performances that comprise half of this thesis aim to respond to and generate relationships not only between theatre and its ‘audience’, but through a sensitivity to site as historically, geographically, culturally and socially located. Key to this project is an understanding of the boundaries, limitations and exclusions that inevitably come to define theatre practice in a site with as many contradictory and conflicting relationships as a busy arts venue like the Arches. The findings of this research are primarily dependent on three practice-as-research projects at the venue: Underneath the Arches (January 2009), Midland Street (September 2009) and A Work on Progress (April 2010). These projects have focussed respectively on three key areas of relational theatre practice; the performance text, the theatre audience and processes of theatre production. The written part of the thesis provides an exegesis of this practice, critically reflecting on the relationships that developed through the performances. Combining a practical and theoretical approach, this research interrogates Bourriaud’s relational aesthetic model through its application to the development of theatre practice within the specific context of a cultural site. Conversely, it reveals and works with the multiple relationships of the Arches, thereby providing new knowledge about the relational processes through which a cultural site is constituted.

This research project examines the relationship between the female body and technology and analyses how contemporary artists are exploring the creative and political potential of technologies within their performance practice. By interrogating the culturally constructed gendering of technologies and theories of the female body through contemporary feminisms, this study shows how by working against existing patriarchal structures surrounding bodies and technology female artists are developing a technologised feminist praxis. The artists that I focus on throughout this thesis acknowledge, challenge and attempt to subvert dominant and conventional applications of the technologies, and therefore I read their work as feminist. This study analyses a range of types of technology and their applications in contemporary performance practice including: immersive technologies, digital and analogue technologies, the Internet, biotechnologies and cyborg technologised performance. Within each of these chapters the technologies are analysed in relation to the performing female body and I apply critical theory to enable me to read these works as “hybrid” and as illustrative of artists working within a “cyborg consciousness” to explore alternative political modes. This project is informed by the work of cultural critic and feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway whose “Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) altered the landscape of feminist discussions surrounding the technologised female body. Her utopian manifesto evokes the cyborg as a creature of social fiction and social reality and calls for a re-coding of bodies and approaches to political thinking. I argue in this thesis that the artists I am investigating attempt a re-coding of female bodies and of existing gender conventions surrounding bodies and technology to develop a new cyborg feminist praxis.

This thesis explores the relationship between postdramatic theatre and écriture féminine using a practice-as-research methodology. Its claim is that Hélène Cixous’s écriture féminine is revitalised as a source for feminist theatre studies through the emergence of postdramatic theatre. The project’s practice-led research identified and extracted principles from Cixous’s prose writing that are especially compelling for theatre and explored these through laboratory practice. The primary sources for doing this were Cixous’s novels Inside (1969) and The Book of Promethea (1983), as well as her writing on Clarice Lispector. The exploration of these materials was a creative and transformative activity that identified equivalent strategies between the two media – prose writing and theatre – while at the same time revealing significant differences and tensions. The practice is documented in the thesis via research logs and video evidence. The written reflection draws attention to the specific potentialities that theatre brings to écriture féminine and discusses how the outcomes of the practice-led research resonate with postdramatic aesthetics. While the research findings accumulated strategically across the series of three performances, and the performances built upon each other iteratively, each of the findings chapters focuses in detail on one aspect of the practice: specifically, semiotics, dramaturgy and feminine epistemology. By pinpointing and discussing nodal points at which postdramatic practices and écriture féminine intersect, this thesis aims to show that postdramatic theatre has the potential to be – and thus frequently is – feminine. Indeed, the overall aim of this thesis is to advance the emerging field of study of feminism in postdramatic theatre by exploring the feminine potential of postdramatic theatre and proposing that Cixous’s écriture féminine offers a way of framing the poetics of postdramatic theatre in relation to feminist politics. The findings have potential utility for theatre-makers seeking a feminist method in the postdramatic as well as scholars of postdramatic theatre and feminism.