Chapter 1 describes the subjects and the investigation procedure including the recorded interviews and equipment used. It also outlines the ten pronunciation lessons that were given. Chapter 2 is a short account of the phonemes of Australian English. Chapter 3 is an account of the phonemes of Vietnamese, summarising and comparing the analyses of Nguyen Dang Liem and Le Ba Thao (later form: Thao Le). Chapter 4 compares Australian English and South Vietnamese, discussing the postulated correspondence of the phonemes and predicting errors arising from L1 interference. Chapter 5 is a detailed analysis of the English sounds spoken by the subjects, including descriptions of the results of the first and second tests. This chapter comprises detailed analysis of the vowels, diphthongs, consonants and consonant clusters pronounced by the subjects. The bulk of this chapter could have been contained in an appendix. A reader may choose to read only the first few pages and then go on to chapter 6. Chapter 6 is a summary of the vowels, diphthongs and consonants analysed in chapter 5, but presented in a less detailed way, enabling easier access to the findings in chapter 5. This chapter is especially useful for those who want to concentrate on the main points. Chapter 7 gives some practical ideas for teachers of English pronunciation to Vietnamese people. Chapter 8 describes the statistical agreement tests. It includes the percentages of difficulties and improvements of the vowels, diphthongs and consonants calculated overall and in word position, and the difficulties of the individual students. Chapter 9 gives a description of the approxilect spoken by South Vietnamese speakers of English. It includes a consideration of predictable and non-predictable error types and provides some details about first language interference. Chapter 10 provides an acoustical analysis of the vowels of South Vietnamese

This thesis proposes a viewing of portraiture through the conceptualisation and consciousness of diaspora. The thesis is divided into two sections: a creative body of original artwork and a supporting exegesis. The practice-based part of the thesis presents collective, non-essentialised portraits in the form of installations comprising works-on-paper and artist’s books, while the exegesis investigates artistic and intellectual perspectives on portraiture in light of some contemporary thinking on diaspora theory and experience. Together, the two parts of the thesis propose a re-visioning and “rethinking” of the relationship between portraiture, diaspora and subjectivity that shifts the function of the portrait from a referential to a performative role, finding significance not in the fixed identity of a sitter/subject, but in the relational and collective subjectivities forged between artist, subject and viewer. By positioning portraiture alongside diaspora, I have explored notions that arise from shared experiences of diaspora, drawing on the critical vocabulary of postmodernist cultural discourses of globalisation and dispersion while examining how contemporary portraiture can reflect such an understanding of the world, and in particular how it interacts with and “thinks through” notions of identity, subjectivity and representation.

Due to a range of historical reasons, relatively few academic studies of Cambodian society and culture in relation to women have been available to inform researchers and Western aid workers. To assist in filling this gap, this thesis analyses Western understandings of the application of Women and Development (WID) and Gender and Development (GAD) policies in Cambodia against the backdrop of the reality of Cambodian culture and politics. The first three chapters provide the historical and cultural context for understanding the fate of WID/GAD policies introduced in the 1990s. Chapters Four and Five provide the personal context for the thesis, focussing on my role as a researcher and the sense I have made of Cambodian women's understanding of their own history and culture. Chapter Four provides a description of my acculturation into Cambodian society as an ethnographer through 'adoption' into a Cambodian family, and outlines the theoretical approaches and ethnographic procedures used in the collection and analysis of data. Chapter Five describes my understanding of how and why Cambodian women interpreted and adapted their culture and history in the way they did in the 1990s. Against these historical, cultural and personal contexts, Chapters Six to Eight describe and analyse the WID/GAD development process during this same decade. Chapter Nine concludes the thesis by drawing together the interconnecting threads of previous chapters. Its central argument is that Western concepts of gender equity remained alien to Cambodian culture in its specific historical manifestation in the 1990s. Given the combination of cultural barriers to change within both Cambodian society and the foreign aid community, the WID/GAD agenda introduced in the 1990s was destined to fail in its attempt to alleviate feminised poverty and empower Cambodian women. As the chapter describes, the agenda was largely pursued under the auspices of MOWA. However, government inability or unwillingness to prioritise the needs of its people combined with donor failure to monitor aid assistance and collaborate with local women in a culturally sensitive way inevitably meant that wealth and power increased at the top, while poverty and powerlessness increased at the bottom. But the chapter and the thesis overall conclude on a positive note, by considering the potential of a local community development model based on trust-building and Cambodian understandings of gender equity centred on the Buddhist wat.

This Master of Arts project comprises a novel, Severance Packages, written for electronic and digital publication, and an accompanying exegesis that contextualises the novel in relation to its genre and to the emerging field of electronic and digital publication in Australia.

It is argued in this thesis that Australian history between 1966 and 1975 can usefully be termed 'the Whitlam period' because the 1972-1975 ALP government of E.G. Whitlam represented the culmination of a wider set of movements for progressive social change, activated primarily by post-1965 opposition to Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War. It is suggested that the defeat of this government marked the end of the postwar 'Keynesian' public policy consensus and the rise to dominance of a neo-classical liberal public policy framework, based on a comparatively negative or 'disillusioned' view of both human nature and the capacity of society to organise itself in a rational and equitable way. And it is argued that the ongoing political importance of the Whitlam period - as the political and historical Other of contemporary Australian society - means that interpretations of this period are especially contested. Accordingly, taking its cue from Raymond Williams's still relevant theoretical argument that culture is an active element of social development, this thesis examines the cultural causes of the defeat of Whitlam and the rise to dominance of neo-classical liberal public policy. It is argued that the primary cultural cause of these social developments is a broad-based Americanisation of Australian culture. The central evidence for this contention is found in the lives and works of Patrick White, Frank Hardy and Les Murray, authors held to best represent the major - Anglocentric, nationalist and American - cultural influences of the Whitlam period.

Open Silence: An Application of the Perennial Philosophy to Literary Creation is a dissertation that combines a creative component, which is a long, narrative poem, with a framing essay that is an exegesis on the creative component. The poem, entitled The Silence Inside the World, tells the story of four characters, an albino woman in a coma, an immortal wizard, a dead painter, and an unborn soul, as they strive to comprehend the bizarre, dream-like realm in which they find themselves. The narrative utilizes various metaphysical elements of the Perennial Philosophy for the creation of character, event and setting, and also uses the concept of Imagination as the power and place of creative endeavour. The poem comprises 8,170 lines of blank verse arranged in three-line stanzas, for a total of 62,816 words. The exegesis accompanying The Silence Inside the World explains the creative value to the writer of the philosophy underlying the work. It does this by examining the artistic and critical experiences arising out of the writing of the poem. The first half of the exegesis, entitled 'Intentions: Tzimtzum', explores the biographical background of the author, those influences not only on the motivation to write such a creative text, but also on the original desire to investigate such creativity and spirituality in the first place. It also examines those elements of the Perennial Philosophy felt necessary for incorporation into the creative component. The section then delineates the factors Harold Bloom considers necessary for the creation of strong work and considers how the intended creative project may fulfil these requirements. Finally, 'Intentions' presents those creative, mythic and symbolic 2 Word count includes title page and chapter titles. materials gleaned from the critical process that are likely to be prove useful for the creative component. The shorter, second half of the essay, entitled 'Reflections: Tikkun', examines the intricacies of the drafting process for the poem and for the thesis as a whole, as well as the lessons gathered from the project and its overall success. The section ends with suggestions for further work not only for the present author, but also for others, writers and critics alike. The full exegesis, which comprises the segments 'Introduction', 'Intentions: Tzimtzum', 'Reflections: Tikkun', and 'Conclusion', totals 37,077 words.

This thesis is divided into two volumes, the creative work and the exegesis. The creative work, My ornament, is an Australian novel set in India. It explores - from a feminist perspective - issues of desire, subjectivity, agency and connection among three women and their moving, sexual bodies across time and space. In so doing, its aim is to place women at the centre of literary/critical discourse, emphasising connection rather than differences across cultures. The voices of the two main characters, Rachel and Muddupalani, alternate, cross over, merge and pull apart in the narrative that moves between the 18th and 20th centuries, Australia and India, with the third mythic woman, Radha, a textual presence in the poetry written by Muddupalani. The exegesis constructs an intellectual and fictional genealogy for the novel, situating it in a 21st century discursive space. While it is a work of Australian fiction - with an Australian author and protagonist - I suggest that it contributes to the following writing traditions: South Indian poetics and 18th century culture; Francophone women’s literary theory, in particular ecriture feminine; and notions of 'dancing desire'. This account of choreographing a fiction (of the self within a text) moves along intersecting planes through the liberatory spatio-temporal territory available in cultural nomadism and transnational feminist practice. Together, these two volumes create a new discursive space by linking seemingly disparate elements and fictional characters to create a region in which women - writing and dancing women - can connect and move freely across cultural and time zones; as heterosexual erotic beings, they articulate their desire and reflect it back through their art. It is recommended that the novel be read before the exegesis.

This thesis is an exploration of gender relations in contemporary Papua New Guinea. It is dedicated to unveiling the standpoints of senior men in a range of powerful senior positions towards issues of gender, and asks the question ‘How do contemporary big men conceptualise their own and others’ masculinity?’ Firstly, it begins with a discussion of the legacy of the colonial era in terms of gendered power and looks at some of the ways in which Western Anthropologists typified masculinities and, to a lesser extent, femininities. Secondly, it surveys a range of literature written within the West which deals with theories of gender and attempts to apply these to the Papua New Guinean context. Following this is the chapter which gives an overview of the methodological considerations and research methods employed in the thesis. Using a feminist perspective, it goes on to investigate the perspectives of a number of men who hold senior positions within the education system, the public service, non-government organisations and the government itself in order to ascertain what, if any, contribution they offer the project of developing gender equity. In doing so, it considers the typologies of masculinity problematised by the participants and a model of their interrelation and intersections is offered.

This thesis combines theoretical discussion with extracts from transcribed focus groups and interviews to illuminate the impact on the identity of formerly heterosexual women who become lesbians in mid-life. I have conducted my research as participant observer who has this core experience in common with the other subjects. I have also included my poetry and journal extracts to track and comment on the project and the topic. The accounts from twenty-three focus group members and interviewees contribute in two ways to the gap in published literature about the coming out process. First, this is to my knowledge the only Australian study of this kind. Second, the women's stories differ from other collections of coming out narratives because they do not, as a rule, privilege the lesbian experience over the heterosexual one. Instead the study focuses on what changed for the women when they made this transition, and on what stayed the same. They discuss these changes and lack of change with regard to personal identity, relationships with other women, children and families, friends, the workplace and the wider culture. The study investigates how all these elements of the women's lives have been influenced by their own maturity and by the prevailing social attitudes toward homosexuality at the time they came out. It also discusses the women's various attitudes toward the lesbian community and the politics of labelling themselves according to their sexual orientation. The study is underpinned by theoretical perspectives on the formation of identity, on current thinking about sex and gender, and on an understanding of the evolving positions of lesbians and gays in the eyes of the church, the law, psychology and society in general. It pays particular attention to the relationship between lesbianism and feminism, and the impact of queer theory on lesbian identity. It also examines the changing nature of representations of lesbians in popular culture.

In this thesis, I argue that socialist realism is by nature more political than literary; in the domain of politics, it is more nationalistic than socialistic; and in the domain of literature, it is more neo-classical or romantic than realist. Over many decades, writers were advised to represent reality as it ought to be; and in many cases, in so doing, they had to sacrifice not only the truth but also their intellectual and artistic status: their writing did not reflect what they really believed, felt or thought. As a result, ideologically, socialist realism became doctrinaire-ism, and artistically, it became an illustration of the Communist Party's policies. While other 'isms' in Western literature such as realism, romanticism and symbolism took at least half a century to take hold in Vietnam, socialist realism did so with record speed - in just one year. Promulgated at the first Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers in 1934, the doctrine of socialist realism was appearing in Vietnamese newspapers just one year later. However, it had been imported by revolutionaries whose interest was mainly political, not literary: in their view, socialist realism was the best way to transform literature into a political weapon. For writers who had not divorced themselves from the Confucian aesthetics, which placed its particular emphasis on the social and educational function of literature, socialist realism became more acceptable because of the development of nationalism, especially during the Second World War, when Vietnam was dominated simultaneously by two empires: France and Japan. Despite having been imported from France, the socialist realism which was officially adopted in Vietnam was mainly that interpreted by China's Maoists. The profound impact of Mao Zedong's theory of socialist realism in Vietnamese literary thought and activity after the August 1945 Revolution can be explained by several factors, geographical, political and cultural. But it is here argued the most important factor was probably the war. Over three decades, from 1945 to 1975, Vietnam was continually at war, first with the French and later with the Americans. It can be argued that it is the very culture of war that helped to create the type of intellectual and emotional environment necessary for the easy reception of Maoism, an ideology which was originally born in wartime and aimed to serve the war. It can also be argued that, together with Maoism, the war culture itself became one of the crucial factors in shaping socialist realism in the anti-French resistance areas during 1945-54 and in North Vietnam during 1954-1975. The dominance of Maoism and the culture of war transformed socialist realism into something like a para-religion in which the leaders of the Party all became theorists of literature. These people had neither the time nor the knowledge to discuss issues of literature in depth; and consequently, the so-called canonical texts of Vietnamese socialist realism consisted only of several simple pronouncements on literature by the leaders in various forms, including letters, speeches and resolutions. As a result, Vietnamese socialist realism became a dogmatism and, in Vietnamese writers' words, a 'doctrinaire realism'. This 'doctrinaire realism', which was consolidated during the wars against the French and the Americans, was strongly challenged in peacetime - after the 1954 Geneva Agreements and after the 1975 victory by the two best known dissident movements: the Nhan Van - Giai Pham affair and the perestroika-styled doi moi campaign. Both were finally suppressed by the government; but while the former movement was harshly penalized, the latter is still fortunate to be witnessing the death of socialist realism. Although Vietnam is still a one-party ruled state, and the Vietnamese government still holds a monopoly on publishing, forbidding independent presses and journals, and trying to keep its strict control over literary life, socialist realism, both as a doctrine and as a movement, has died. This death resulted not from the activities of the dissidents but from two non-literary elements: globalization and the market-oriented economy which has been adopted by the Vietnamese Communist Party and government since the late 1980s. Now that publishers earned money solely from the number of books sold or in circulation and writers lived solely by their royalties, literary consumers played a decisive role in literary life, and writers were able to make easy contact with the world, the partiinost principle became nonsense and as a result socialist realism became a thing of the past. In short, socialist realism was born of communism, nurtured by nationalism, developed at war, challenged in peacetime, and killed by the force of a free economy and globalization.