Esta tese busca analisar a história da geografia crítica na França e nos Estados Unidos, principalmente através da concepção de estrutura. A partir de uma compreensão preliminar dos geógrafos anarquistas do século XIX, seguimos para a análise do marxismo e do debate sobre o materialismo geográfico entre geopolíticos e intérpretes do pensamento marxiano na geografia. Após a limitação da possibilidade histórica do desenvolvimento de uma geografia de esquerda na Alemanha, nos voltamos para a análise da geografia francesa que interage com o marxismo devido à resistência ao nazismo e à necessidade de emancipar-se de algumas concepções do pensamento vidaliano. Acompanhamos, então, o rico desenvolvimento da geografia de esquerda como as análises de geografia urbana e econômica, assim como a introdução da temática do subdesenvolvimento. A geografia de esquerda desacelera-se com a crise do marxismo e a ascensão da nova geografia. Contudo, pouco tempo depois, o descrédito da geografia quantitativa, o contexto mundial de lutas revolucionárias e os eventos de maio de 68 fazem surgir a geografia crítica. No caso francês, exploramos as relações entre a geografia de esquerda e o surgimento da geografia crítica; para os Estados Unidos, tentamos demonstrar como alguns de seus desenvolvimentos originam-se da nova geografia quantitativa. Através do estruturalismo althusseriano e os intelectuais que o atacaram, surge o processo de transformação epistemológica e de instituicionalização em que geógrafos outrora marginalizados começam a integrar a academia e desfrutar de um grande capital cultural. No entanto, a institucionalização representa a normatização e a desradicalização. A ascensão do pós-modernismo conjuntamente ao esmorecimento do marxismo em âmbito internacional faz com que o projeto da geografia crítica altere-se profundamente, abrindo precedentes para a consolidação cada vez mais intensa do pós-estruturalismo no final da década de 1980. / This thesis analyzes the history of critical geography in France and the United States, primarily through the conception of the structure. Our approach will preliminary understand the nineteenth-century anarchist geographers followed by the analysis of marxisms rise and geographical materialism debate among geopoliticals and interpreters of Marxian thought in geography. After the impossibility to develop a left geography in Germany, we turn to the analysis of French geography interacts with marxism tied to the resistance to nazism and the need to emancipate itself from some conceptions of Vidal de la Blache thought. We see the rich development of left geography in his urban and economic analysis, as well in introducting the theme of underdevelopment. The left geography decelerates with the crisis of marxism and the rise of new geography. However, shortly after the discrediting of quantitative geography, the global context of revolutionary struggles and the events of May 68 give rise to critical geography. In the french case, we explore the relations between the left geography and the emergence of critical geography, and explaning about United States we tried to demonstrate how some of their new developments came from quantitative geography. Through the althusserian structuralism and his criticals is possible to see the epistemological and institutional transformations in which geographers formerly marginalized begin to integrate the university and enjoy a great cultural capital. However, institutionalization is normalization and deradicalization. The insurgency of postmodernism with the demise internationally marxism makes changes in critical geography setting precedents for increasingly consolidation of post-structuralism in the late 1980s.

This thesis provides the first extensive queer reading of a 'Golden Age' British detective fiction writer. The aim of this thesis is to assess queer potential in texts published by Agatha Christie between 1920 and 1952. Human identity can be read as self-consciously constructed in Christie's novels, which were written in a context of two world wars, advances in technology and communication, and what Michel Foucault called the 'medicalization' of Western culture. The self-conscious stereotyping in Christie's prose undermines her texts' conservative appeal to the status quo. Chapter One justifies this project's critique of identity essentialism in the texts by considering the manufacturing of 'Agatha Christie' as a widely-read celebrity author. Reading Christie's authorial identity as something established and refined through a market-driven response to readers' expectations and a conscious engagement with earlier forms of detective fiction provides space for reading identity itself as a stylized, performative, and sometimes parodic theme within the texts. In subsequent chapters, employing theoretical insights from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Judith Butler, and Lee Edelman, I explore Christie's participation in contemporary debates surrounding masculinity, femininity, and the importance of the family in shaping individual identity. Finally, I consider Christie's reputation in the twenty-first century by exploring nostalgic television adaptations of her work. Comparing the presentation of 'queer' characters in the literary texts to the adaptations' use of explicit homosexual themes and characters, I conclude that there is a stronger potential for 'queering' identity in the former. As the first full queer reading of a 'Golden Age' detective novelist, this thesis expands queer notions of archive and canonicity: few scholars to date have considered mainstream literary texts without overt LGBTQ+ themes or characters from a queer perspective. Given Christie's global reach and appeal, locating queerness in her texts means understanding queerness as fundamental to everyday culture. This means engaging with a subversive potential in twentieth century middlebrow conservatism.

Between 1918 and 1933, the eugenic notion of “defective heredity” was central to psychiatric practice in British Columbia. Public and medical professionals’ concerns were heightened by an apparent increase in “insane” and “mentally deficient” individuals in the province. Using the annual reports for the asylums and the case files of women who were admitted to the Public Hospital for the Insane and to Essondale between 1918 and 1933, this thesis examines the relationship between psychiatric practice and eugenics, specifically how eugenically-minded asylum physicians classified and diagnosed female patients. Asylum physicians used admissions forms, patient interviews, observation, and inference to make diagnoses. Often, despite a lack of evidence, they concluded that patients had inherited a predisposition to mental disease. Women admitted to B.C.’s Public Hospital for the Insane and to Essondale were more likely than their male counterparts to have their mental condition linked to heredity. Any “eccentric” or “abnormal” behaviour or personality in the patient or their family was considered by asylum physicians to be evidence of a predisposition to mental disorder. Within the population of female asylum patients, racialized women were the most likely to be labeled as having “defective heredity.” Widespread racial discrimination in the province, combined with the fact that eugenic discourse targeted non-white citizens as being biologically and culturally inferior, shaped and influenced the asylum physicians’ classification and diagnoses of mental illness among racialized women. The experiences of these women during their incarceration were also shaped by racialized discourse and their behaviour was negatively stereotyped by asylum staff. / Graduate / 2018-08-17

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In this dissertation two solo violin compositions Nelle Mani d’Amduscias (1996) and Luamerava(2000) by the South African composer Hendrik Hofmeyr are analysed regarding the programmatic, compositional and idiomatic content. The Luamerava uses an adapted African legend that is inscribed at the beginning and according to the composer imitates the African mbira or finger piano. The Eurocentric Nelle Mani d’Amduscias is Italian for “into the hands of the (medieval) devil”. Both pieces are analysed under the headings form, melody and motives, rhythm, harmonies and violinistic aspects, always connecting to the programmatic content of the titles. Described by the composer as a pre-sketch to Raptus, some similarities with Nelle Mani d’Amduscias are noted. Mythes by Szymanowski provided a source of inspiration for Nelle Mani d’Amduscias and similar compositional techniques are observed. The title Nelle Mani d’Amduscias is musically illustrated with symbolic elements. These include the tritone, or Diabolus in Musica, the use of which was discouraged by religious medieval theorists, the trill, which is reminiscent of the Devil.s Trill Sonata by Tartini, and a difficulty level that is reminiscent of a Paganini Caprice. This further links to rumours surrounding the violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini of being in league with the devil, due to his unprecedented performing brilliance. Medieval elements are also considered. The use of mirror image interval patterns and the use of the octatonic scale are discussed as themes. The use of the vertical 2:3 rhythm, an unusual technique on the solo violin, is noted. Luamerava is analysed in connection with the characteristics of mbira music and African music. African and mbira compositional devices that are noted include call and response, melodic shape, mbira counterpoint and the use of ostinato, hocket, canon, hemiola, additive rhythms and African dancing in the Danzante. The chord sequence of mbira music of the Shona of Zimbabwe is compared to the harmonies used in the Danzante. The performance of the Western tradition is compared to that of the African mbira tradition. A short comparison noting the similarities and differences of the two works is provided in the conclusion. Copyright / Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Music / Unrestricted

Spanning the period from the early years of the Cold War to the early twenty-first century, Crossing Out argues that medical theories of gender variance which emerge in the middle of the twentieth century are bound by the Cold-War–era discursive limits within which they were articulated, and that the ideological content of those theories persists into late-century research and treatment protocols. I parallel these analyses with interrogations of literary representations of transgendered subjects. What emerges most powerfully from this analysis of literary works is their tendency to signify in excess of the medical foreclosures, even when they seem consistent with medical discourse. By reading these two discursive systems against each other, the dissertation demonstrates the ability of literary discourse to accommodate multifaceted subject positions which medical discourse is unable to articulate. Literature thus complicates the stories that medical culture tells, revealing complex and multivariate possibilities for transgendered identification absent from traditional medical accounts. In tracing these discursive intersections the dissertation draws on and extends Michel Foucault’s theory of subjugated knowledges and Judith Butler’s writings on the formation of gendered subjects. Chapter One establishes the Cold War context, and argues that there are significant continuities between 1950s theories of intersexuality and Cold War ideology. Chapter Two extends this analysis to take in theories of transsexualism that emerged in the same years, and analyzes the discursive excesses of a 1950s pulp novel representation of a transsexual. Chapter Three establishes that the ideological content of the medical theories remained virtually unchanged by the 1990s, and argues that multivalent literary representations of transgenderism from the same decade promise the emergence of unanticipated forms of gender identity that exceed medical norms. Chapter Four is concerned with transgendered children, as they are represented in medical writing and in young adult and children’s literature. Interrogating fiction which negotiates between established medical discourse and an emergent transgender discourse, the chapter argues that these works at once invite and subvert a pathologizing understanding of gender-variant children while simultaneously providing data that demands to be read through the lens of an emergent affirmative notion of trans-childhood. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

This dissertation is about a modern Chinese mathematician’s use of traditional Chinese mathematics. Wu Wen-Tsun (born 1919), a French-trained algebraic topologist, became interested in Chinese mathematical heritage in the Cultural Revolution period (1966-1976). He claimed that his subsequent, internationally acclaimed work on the “mechanisation of mathematics” (computer proofs) was inspired by this historical interest. He thus situated his mathematical success within a nationalist framework of independent modernisation, and has become a government-promoted celebrity since the turn of the millennium. Against the standard ‘national hero’ story told about Wu, I portray his turn to the history of Chinese mathematics as a sophisticated response to political, institutional and ideological pressures on mathematics in post-1949 Maoist China. I integrate a biographical account of Wu’s career with in-depth studies of the content and influence of his mathematical work to show the fluctuations of his fortunes since his return to China in 1952. Wu as an individual shared the fate of the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he worked between 1952 and 1977. I argue that Wu’s philosophy of mathematics was shaped by the utilitarianism preached by the Communist Party of China, which caused excesses especially during the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), but remained a feature of Chinese science policy even afterwards. After the research hiatus of the Cultural Revolution, Wu consciously linked his research to ideology. His parallel mathematical research and history-writing since 1977 have reflected the same philosophy of mathematics and the same concerns about modernisation, national development, and independence. The dissertation uses unpublished archival material from China and first-hand interviews with Wu Wen-Tsun and other Chinese mathematicians. I relate Wu’s mathematical nationalism to theories of cultural nationalism and historicism from the political sciences, and theoretically analyse the contradiction between nationalism and internationalism in modern Chinese mathematics.

The first four decades of the twentieth century was a period of rapid development in physics. The late nineteenth century discoveries of X-rays, Becquerel rays and subatomic particles had revealed new properties of matter, and the early twentieth century quantum and relativity theories added to the notion that the discipline was undergoing a fundamental change in thought and practice. Historians and scientists alike have retrospectively conceived of a sharp divide between nineteenth century and twentieth century physics, applying the terms ‘classical’ and ‘modern’ to distinguish between these two practices. However, recent scholarship has suggested that early twentieth century physicists did not see this divide as self-evident, and in fact were responsible for consciously constructing these categories and definitions. This thesis explores the creation of the terms ‘classical’ and ‘modern’ physics in Britain, and the physicists responsible. I consider how these terms were employed in ‘public’ arenas (lectures, books, newspapers, museums) influencing the wider reception of ‘modern’ physics. I consider not only the rhetorics employed by ‘modern’ physicists, but also those we would now consider to be ‘classical’, revealing a diverse range of potential definitions of ‘modern’ physics. Furthermore, even within the ‘modernists’ themselves, there was considerable disagreement over how their work was to be presented, as industrially applicable, or of value simply as intellectual knowledge in and of itself. There were also different notions of how scientific ‘progress’ should be portrayed, whether knowledge advanced through experimental refinement or theoretical work. Early twentieth century ‘modern’ physics appeared to discard long held theories, rejecting much of the discipline’s past. As such, physicists’ connection to the legacy of Newton was under threat. Furthermore, the instability of science more generally was revealed: if physicists had shown the old theories to be wrong, then why should the new ones be any different? This had severe implications as to how the public placed ‘trust’ in science. I explore how physicists carefully managed the ‘public’ transition from ‘classical’ to ‘modern’ physics, regaining public trust during a period of scientific ‘revolution’ and controversy.

La postmodernité est peut-être une époque de crise des humanités : depuis les années 60, l’apprentissage du latin et du grec est en chute libre. Les arts n’en continuent pas moins, toutefois, de recourir à la matière antique. Dans les arts à récit, c’est-à-dire à dominante narrative, l’esthétique postmoderne traite moins l’Antiquité comme une source de genres à imiter et adapter, à la manière des classiques, ou comme un ensemble de récits à parodier et transposer, à la façon moderne, que comme un corpus de textes auquel recourir pour pasticher les genres, déconstruire les récits, et notamment les « méta-récits », les grands récits à message, les idéologies. L’Antiquité gréco-latine y fonctionne soit comme un autre passé, un autre monde, païen, homo-érotique, à opposer au nôtre, soit comme un nôtre passé, impérialiste, sexiste, une origine des « grands récits », à laquelle remonter pour les déconstruire. Cependant, l’esthétique postmoderne n’englobe pas tout l’art de l’époque postmoderne. Les esthétiques classiques et modernes continuent d’exister pendant cette période. Dans une perspective classique, le péplum, c’est-à-dire l’Antiquité envisagée comme un genre, se déplace du cinéma vers d’autres arts (série télévisée, bande dessinée), se servant de l’espace-temps antique comme moyen d’évasion mais aussi comme matière à réflexion sur le pouvoir, le rapport entre dominants et dominés, centre et marges. La transposition moderne des récits antiques n’en finit pas, elle, de jouer son rôle pour mythifier le quotidien et démythifier l’héroïsme. Autant de manières d’aborder aujourd’hui l’Antiquité, non plus seulement comme ce modèle en crise de la République des Lettres. / Postmodernity may be a time of crisis of the humanities: since the sixties, the learning of the classics has been plummeting. Nevertheless, the arts have gone on using the matter of Rome. In narrative arts – in other words, arts where narratives are dominant, the postmodern aesthetic does not use Antiquity through imitation and adaptation of its genres, as did the classics, nor through parodies and transpositions of its narratives, in the manner of the moderns: it resorts to it as a corpus of texts, in order to pastiche genres, to deconstruct narratives, and especially “metanarratives”, great narratives conveying messages, ideologies. Greek and Latin classics function either as another past, another world, a pagan, homo-erotic world, that can be contrasted with ours; or as our past, steeped in imperialism, and sexism, an origin of the “metanarratives”, that we can get back to for their deconstruction. However, the postmodern aesthetic doesn’t rule all art in the postmodern era. Classic and modern aesthetics still exist during this period. On one hand, in a classical way, the epic, that is Antiquity viewed as a genre, spreads from the cinema to other arts (television series, comic books), and uses ancient space-time for escapism, but also as material for reflections on power, relationships between the dominants and the dominated, centre and periphery. On the other hand, the modern transposition of ancient narratives relentlessly plays its part to mythologize everyday life and demythologize heroism. These are all different, contemporary ways of dealing with the classics, beyond the mantra of a “model in crisis” within the Republic of Letters.

Until the recent publication of twelve choral compositions, Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) was known solely as a professional violist and composer of chamber music and art songs. Clarke composed choral music throughout her active period from 1906 to 1944. In 2004, the first study of Clarke's complete compositional output provided an introduction to the choral music, but only covered selected works. The present study traces the development of Clarke's compositional style through chronological analysis of all twelve choral compositions and an incomplete fragment. Clarke's choral music reveals the selection of high quality, expressive texts; exploration of the timbral, registral, and textural potential of unaccompanied choral music; changes in the treatment of all musical elements; the persistent acquisition of new techniques; and reliance on English choral genres including the madrigal, glee, carol, part song and motet. Chapter one establishes Clarke's importance through a survey of publication, criticism, and scholarship. The chapter also examines the society in which Clarke lived and the issues women composers encountered. A biography then reveals that despite obstacles, Clarke tenaciously pursued compositional study, eagerly acquired new techniques, and expressed enthusiasm for each compositional project. Her skill was confirmed by success in competitions and festivals. Throughout her active period, Clarke supported herself as a professional violist who specialized in chamber music, and a busy performing schedule limited her compositional work. Chapter two documents Clarke's formative vocal- and chamber-music experiences and suggests that her thorough knowledge of chamber music influenced her approach to choral composition. The chapter continues with analysis of Clarke's first seven choral works. The first three are well-crafted part songs that demonstrate Clarke's assimilation of basic compositional techniques. The next four show the increasing complexity of Clarke's style that culminates in her mature masterpiece, "He That Dwelleth in the Secret Place of the Most High." Chapter three presents analysis of three choral arrangements, two works for women's voices, and a choral fragment for mixed voices. The last five complete choral compositions confirm elements of Clarke's mature style and demonstrate her interest in exploring the new challenges of choral arranging and writing for women's voices. While Clarke's choral arrangements of her own songs are idiomatic adaptations for unaccompanied, mixed voices, the last three compositions display the diversity of styles Clarke employed in her late works. Chapter four summarizes changes in Clarke's choral style from 1906 to 1944, examines reasons for her obscurity, and raises questions that merit further research. The appendix which follows clarifies Clarke's intentions and illustrates common editorial issues and solutions through comparison of choral manuscripts and published editions.