My dissertation tracks the production of "common sense" about female sexuality and psychology in nineteenth-century sensational British literature. I move from the sensation novel's heyday, represented by Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868) and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (1862), through the fin-de-siècle Gothic literary revival with Bram Stoker's Dracula(1895), and conclude with a reading of the representation of aberrant female sexuality in the emergent science of nineteenth-century sexology. For Victorian readers, few things could have seemed further removed from sensation literature--from lurid crime novels to sordid news stories to sexualized science--than common sense. Yet, my project illustrates the role of sensational literature in provoking the dark millennial fantasies that passed as common sense and often animated theories of femininity expressed in late-Victorian science. Common sense retains its rhetorical force through the assumption that its premises arise naturally and apply universally. But if we take a historical view, a troubling pattern emerges: common sense has often worked to preserve reactionary views of femininity. For example, in the nineteenth century, common sense led medical professionals to the belief that a woman's reproductive system left her constitutionally more susceptible to "hysteria." define common sense as the product of the frequent iteration of a particular train of associative logic that results in the naturalization and legitimation of claims about reality, even if those claims are both sensationalized and arbitrary. The rhetorical force of common sense requires the perpetual obscuration of its origins. The elusive and frustrating quality of common sense as a cognitive category derives from its ability, in Stuart Hall's words, to "represent itself as the 'traditional wisdom or truth of the ages,' [when] in fact, it is deeply a product of history, 'part of the historical process'" ("Gramsci's Relevance" 431). Hall describes this type of associative relationship between disparate figures often exemplified in the logic of common sense as "an articulation." What Hall refers to as an "articulation" might also be called, when viewed through the lens of literary theory, a "metonymic chain," wherein the literal term for one thing is applied to another with which it becomes linked, articulated. Both terms—articulation and metonymic chain—effectively describe the illusion of necessary correspondence in mere arbitrary association. My translation of this cultural phenomenon into the framework of literary analysis allows for a precise description of the rhetorical transformations involved in conjuring common sense. With frequent iteration, metonymic association may appear to be based on some more substantial similarity—not circumstantial, but necessary; not the product of sensationalism, but the inevitable conclusion derived from and constituting common sense. Common sense regarding female sexuality has frequently been preserved through sensationalism; but paradoxically, sensationalism is often most effective when its characteristic paranoia seems somehow self-evidently justified, even rational. In other words, sensationalism works best to consolidate the paranoid patterns of associative logic informing the nineteenth-century figuration of femininity when it appears not to be working at all—when sensationalism takes on the weight of common sense.

Neo-Victorian studies is a burgeoning subfield which seeks to examine contemporary representations of the Victorian period. For the last decade, neo-Victorian scholars have offered up definitions of what makes a text “neo-Victorian”; often, this has been via a description of what the neo-Victorian is not. The ‘ruling’ definition—i.e., the definition most consistently repeated—hails from the introduction to Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century by Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn: “the Neo-Victorian is more than historical fiction set in the nineteenth century. […] texts (literary, filmic, audio/visual) must in some respect be self-consciously engaged with the act of (re)interpretation, (re)discovery and (re)vision concerning the Victorians” (4). This short delineation significantly comes at the expense of historical fiction, which is a move repeated throughout neo-Victorian efforts to define itself. Neo-Victorian studies has largely concerned itself with literary novels, operating with a heavy anxiety that ‘other’ fiction set in the nineteenth century is escapist and nostalgic in the sense that it simply perpetuates problematic past systems of oppression while evoking the fashionable aesthetic trappings of the Victorian. My dissertation argues that contemporary genre fiction, long derided as ‘simply’ escapist in nature, can also be neo-Victorian. In each of my chapters I analyze texts from a specific genre—steampunk, popular romance, detective fiction, and Sherlock Holmes pastiche—in order to offer a basis for investigating genre fiction with a neo-Victorian lens. I analyze the depiction of corsets and feminist protagonists in three steampunk novels, explore the exhibition of unlikely romantic heroines and Romany romantic heroes in Lisa Kleypas’ historical romance series about the Hathaway family, examine representations of class and gender as well as germane social issues in Anne Perry’s William Monk detective series, and highlight the feminist potential of Carole Nelson Douglas’ series of Sherlock Holmes pastiche featuring Irene Adler. Each chapter considers the Victorian period as represented alongside Victorian novels and literary periodicals in order to demonstrate the shape of these neo-Victorian revisions and make the case the genre fiction can be self-conscious despite its lack of metafictional content.

While Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray depicts the quintessential literary portrait endowed with uncanny life and movement, dozens of such magic portraits are featured in Victorian fiction. From the ravishing picture of the title character in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret to the coveted portrait of a Romantic poet in Henry James's The Aspern Papers, imagined portraits in these texts serve as conduits of desire and fear--windows into passions and repressions that reveal not only the images' external effects but their relation to the unconscious of their viewers. My dissertation turns a critical eye on this gallery of ekphrastic pictures--those not actually visible to the reader but rather visualizable through verbal description--to argue that the meditations on representation and desire that these novels and stories perform not only anticipate but augment theories of the image and the gaze developed primarily since the advent of cinema. Though the dissertation benefits from film theory's models of visual exchange, the distinctions between these portraits and images in film open up fertile analytical terrain. Ekphrastic magic portraits provide a unique opportunity to delve into the intersecting realms of word painting and image perception, the optics of desire and subjectivity, to advance critical discourses in visual studies that are framed both historically and theoretically. Using psychoanalytic and narratological methodologies, particularly those relevant to feminist and queer image theory, "The Ekphrastic Fantastic" demonstrates how the fictional visual exchanges on display in magic portrait stories elucidate various power struggles regarding sexuality and narrative structuring. These literary pictures thereby provide new access to the social and artistic commentaries that often subtend Victorian fiction. Each chapter considers three primary texts and the branch of image theory most relevant to their deployment of magic portraits. Laura Mulvey's foundational essay, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," provides the point of departure in the first chapter, which looks at Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. The second chapter addresses Margaret Oliphant's "The Portrait," Thomas Hardy's "An Imaginative Woman," and James's The Aspern Papers with further feminist insights from Vivian Sobchack and Teresa de Lauretis. The final chapter determines the relationship of principles of visual representation and narrative production of the Aesthetic movement to magic portraits in Walter Pater's "Sebastian van Storck," Vernon Lee's "Oke of Okehurst," and Wilde's Dorian Gray, particularly as they relate to the nascent medium of cinema and the theories that soon as well as later arose to account for the impact of its kinetic mirage. The arc of my argument emphasizes how, as the Victorian period advances, the portraits become increasingly animate and subversive in their challenges to patriarchal gender norms and narrative formulas. In this way, they become the mechanisms by which new models of psycho-sexual relations can be expressed and new social and narrative systems can emerge.

Abstract not available

From the early 1980s, Western governments, led mainly by those in the United Kingdom, have pursued public choice ideas in managing their public sectors, often targeting the monopoly position of public sectors in delivering public goods and services and also the influence and position of public sector trade unions. This policy approach also underpinned the reforms to local government in Victoria, Australia that occurred between 1992 and 1999. The Victorian State Government pursued an agenda of reform aimed at reducing costs in local government, reducing the size and scope of local government in delivering public goods and services and also seeking to reduce the perceived high level of influence of trade unions. On the basis of a literature review of the experiences of public sector reform in the United Kingdom during the 1980s, this study sought to test two propositions about public sector reform agendas and trade unions, using the Victorian local government reform as the primary research context. This was an important research gap since trade unions were a major target of the reform agenda and little research information existed as to how the reform agenda impacted on local government trade unions. Although the Victorian State Government did not possess direct legislative power over trade union behaviour, a reform agenda similar to that imposed by the governments in the United Kingdom, could inflict negative outcomes through the consequential changes resulting from competition in the delivery of local council services. The first proposition was that public sector reform agendas underpinned by public choice ideas sought to inculcate competitive practices in the provision of local government services and consequently reduce trade union influence and position in local government. The second proposition was that the level of success achieved by governments on these dual objectives was determined in part by the responses taken by trade unions to the reform agenda and on the extent to which local councils adopted a competitive culture.Five major research questions and a number of sub-questions were developed from the literature to test these two research propositions. In addition, models of effects on trade unions arising from public sector reform and on trade union responses were developed. The models were important for visually showing the areas of impact on trade unions and the level of impact caused by the reform and to identify the options available and responses undertaken by trade unions during this period. An analytical framework was also established and served as a template for organising and recording findings in this study. The analytical framework served to show the main causal links between the reform agenda and outcomes for trade unions. The study adopted features of both positivist and interpretive methodological approaches to address these research questions. A positivist approach was applied in the development of research protocols to ensure researcher independence. In addition, the information collected was matched to the models of union behaviour and to the relevant elements in the analytical framework. The study also adopted features of an interpretive approach in respect of using small samples and in gathering data through interviews with key informants from three case study organisations, one trade union and two local councils.The information collected on the research questions enabled conclusions to be reached on the two research propositions. The findings supported the first proposition and confirmed previous research studies in the United Kingdom that showed how governments are able to target trade unions in indirect ways through the consequences of the promotion of competition in the delivery of local government goods and services. The study identified the negative effects arising for Victorian local government trade unions in areas of access and influence on government policy decision making, membership levels, bargaining outcomes and relations within and between trade unions. The findings gathered in this study also supported the second research proposition. The level of success by the Victorian State Government in achieving local government reform objectives was in part limited by the responses taken by trade unions and also by the extent to which local councils adopted competitive practices. These findings have contributed important insights into local government reform and trade unions, which had not previously been addressed by researchers. The study has also contributed models of union behaviour and an analytical framework for addressing contemporary public policy issues and trade unions. The amalgamation of local councils planned by the Queensland State Government provides a similar research context in which to further test the usefulness of the models of union behaviour and the analytical framework. In addition, the return of the Australian Labor Party to Federal Government, and their aim of dismantling the previous Liberal-National Party’s WorkChoices industrial relations legislation, provides a context for testing these models and framework under conditions where more direct legislative changes affecting union rights to organise and bargain are pursued.

Australia is amongst the more efficient milk producers in the world.Milk production in the region of south-western Victoria relies mainly on rainfed white clover/perennial ryegrass pastures.As the demand for efficient and competitive milk production increases, the value of N2 fixation must be maximised. The objective of this thesis was to assess N2 fixation in grazed dairy pastures in south-western Victoria. Several tests and experiments were conducted and results noted. Studies revealed low white clover yields to be the major factor limiting N2 fixation in the region. For N2 fixation to have a significant impact on pasture quality and production, problems associated with legume persistence need to be addressed. Strategies may include the breeding of white clover cultivars with greater tolerance to water stress, improved winter production and increased competitiveness with companion species. Alternatively, the introduction of different legume species, better suited to the environment, may be appropriate. Where N2 fixation is unlikely to satisfy N demands, it may be necessary to introduce the strategic use of supplementary feeds or nitrogenous fertilisers. However, this would need to be carefully considered to ensure high input costs did not jeopardise the competitive advantage of low input pasture-based systems / Masters Thesis

This study explored change in six Victorian secondary colleges some four years into the major school-system change program known as ?????Schools of the Future?????. The purpose of the study was to identify successful models and practices for positive school change by exploring school change from the school level perspective. A focus of the investigation was an organizational development program designed by a North American professor of organization and management in which Victorian school principals were trained as their schools entered the ?????Schools of the Future????? program. The project was guided initially by four major research questions to which six additional research questions were added as the research progressed. The research methodology was qualitative. The data for this investigation were collected in 1997. The main means of gathering them was the in-depth interview of the principals of the six schools in the study and of the four members of staff they nominated as knowledgeable about their school?????s change processes. A follow-up questionnaire to the interview, a telephone questionnaire that asked principals for background information about their schools, and a study of school documents were also sources of data. The analysis and interpretation of the data related to charge in the schools was presented in the forms of six case studies and a multisite study. Eleven variables and eighteen insights identified the aspects associated with successful change across the sites. The study?????s three major findings identified the critical importance in the success of change of the school?????s organizational culture and individual participants in change processes, its relationship to elements in its external environment and the nature of its planning for change. A theoretical framework for positive school change environments was developed. It combined the elements associated with successful change in the study. This framework may prove useful as a basis for further research on systemic change in schools and as a point of reference for those actually engaged in leading the change process in schools and school systems.

This thesis investigates the practice of set text study as it is encountered within the English curriculum of a Victorian secondary school. The study evolved from a range of concerns to do with the researcher’s own teaching and the attitudes being expressed in her school community. It developed into an investigation of the student experience of reading, and of studying the required texts in subject, English This research aims to: • provide understanding of the development of set text study and to consider whether this construct is meeting the goals of contemporary English teaching examine both the beliefs which underpin the practices and the practices themselves provide greater understanding of the way students experience this aspect of their school learning consider how notions of transformation, insight and emerging identity through literature study fit with student experience Five guiding research questions address the issues which gave rise to the study. These questions provide a focus and structure throughout the research process. The questions address issues of: students’ school and non-school reading practices, enjoyment, beliefs about learning, ideology and specifically, the potential influence of textual representations of suicide and adult characters on a teenage student’s emerging sense of self. An overview of key theoretical positions on the act of reading situates the attitudinal and theoretical aspects of this research. The practical orientation of this study is situated alongside research on the experience of reading and of teaching literature, both from Australia and overseas. This thesis adopts a phenomenological approach within a constructivist framework. A qualitative methodology using a case-study approach, allows for the prolonged engagement necessary to explore the research questions and develop the sort of relationship necessary to facilitate the in-depth and reflective responses being sought. In-depth interviews (both face-to-face interviews and on-line chat sessions) are the primary data-gathering tool. In reporting the findings, the student voice is privileged. Practical and theoretical notions of communication and language are explored. The processes used to undertake this research are reflected upon and some possibilities for incorporating some of these methods into a school learning context are considered. While the focus of the study is to increase understanding of individual experience, some clear findings emerge. Although reading played an important part in the non-school lives of most of these students, the school experience of reading was more often than not, disappointing. Key factors which students perceived as contributing to their lack of enjoyment and satisfaction included: text choice, lack of challenge in lesson content, the sameness of the associated tasks, the behaviour of peers and lack of opportunity for having their opinions heard. Almost conversely, the students who gained greatest satisfaction reported on: particular texts, the creativity and scope for individual input of required tasks, teacher involvement, more positive class interaction and specific modelling by teachers of required tasks. The thesis concludes with recommendations for structural support (both whole school and classroom) to enable the positive shared reading experiences to become the experience of more students. It challenges the sanctity of the set text and offers a range of alternatives. In calls on teachers to consider the implications of entering a continuing story of students’ reading and to work at developing better ways of incorporating components of effective non-school reading practices into school reading practices. The concerns regarding the potential negative influence of set texts on a student’s identity were not validated in this research. However new concerns for students’ well being did emerge. The research indicates that set texts can make a difference to the quality of students’ lives. By incorporating a range of texts and class activities, by knowing students as well as possible, and by fully engaging as co-readers, teachers are in a better position to minimise student distress and to attend to the work of creating democratic reading environments with the greatest potential for reading success for everyone.

This thesis constitutes a study of a Catholic secondary school in the State of Victoria, Australia, in the year 2001. It addresses the issue of the nature and purpose of Catholic schools in situ, the focus of the research being an in-depth analytical description of the participant school. Consequently, the findings are of potential relevance to those interested in the issue of the nature and purpose of the Catholic school in situ from a general and holistic perspective. Specifically, given the concern of the research with the nature and purpose of a Catholic school in situ, two anticipated areas of focus for the study were identified. These were the defining features of the school, in relation to the concern of the study with the nature of the school, and the ends of the school, in relation to the concern of the study with the purpose of the school. The study was thus governed by 2 two-part general research questions. 1. What are the defining features of the school, and how are they maintained? 2. To what ends is the school oriented, and how is this orientation sustained? In the form of an ethnographic study, the research describes and interprets the participant school from the perspective of those who constitute the day-to-day community. The findings of the study are located within a contextual understanding involving historical and prescriptive perspectives for, and literature pertaining to, the contemporary Catholic school. Given the concern of the ethnography with the development, as opposed to the verification, of theory, data gathered from five major sources over the period of a school Section headings for the Introduction through to the References have necessarily been deleted for electronic presentation. Likewise, page numbers have necessarily been deleted for electronic presentation. year were focused and analysed, through the method of grounded theory, to arrive at the findings of the study. These five sources were participant-observation, in-depth interviews conducted with a number of the school personnel, observation of various school meetings, school documents, and a survey of the student body. The findings of the study, in their descriptive and analytical dimensions, are presented in four chapters. Specifically, these are presented in Chapters Five through to Eight, in relation to four main organising principles pertaining (a) to the description of the school, (b) to predominant perspectives on the school from within its day-to-day community, (c) to the prevailing characteristics upon which the perspectives of the day-today community turn, and (d) to the theoretical construct consequent upon the description, the predominant perspectives, and the prevailing characteristics. As with the descriptive aspect, to which the first two organising principles predominantly pertain, the interpretive dimension of the findings is largely undertaken in two chapters. The first of these chapters (i.e., Chapter Seven), pertaining to the delineation of the prevailing features evident within the perspectives of the day-to-day community, provides an interpretation of the descriptive findings in terms of an autocratic hegemony, a managerial administrative focus, and a bureaucratic organisational culture. Thus, this chapter signifies the primary analysis of the findings of the two previous chapters through completion of the descriptive dimension. The second of these chapters (i.e., Chapter Eight) places this preliminary analysis of the descriptive findings within a theoretical construct pertaining to concepts of disparity and congruity, opposition and compliance. The concepts of disparity and congruity relate to the school's adherence to ideological and primitive imperatives respectively. Those of opposition and compliance relate to the degrees of consonance, within the day-to-day community, in terms of assent to the prevailing order within the school. Consequently, it is to be observed that the elements of description and interpretation, essential to the in-depth analytical description demanded of the ethnographic methodological approach, decrease and increase, respectively, across these four chapters. Section headings for the Introduction through to the References have necessarily been deleted for electronic presentation. Likewise, page numbers have necessarily been deleted for electronic presentation. The study concluded that the nature and purpose of the school were consequent upon its prevailing autocratic hegemony, its pre-eminently managerial administrative focus, and its profoundly bureaucratic organisational culture. These interconnected elements of the school's practices, disparate from the ideological imperatives advocated for the Catholic school, were found to effect a latent opposition within the school community, principally in relation to the teaching personnel, masked by the overall compliance of the day-to-day community with the prevailing order.

This research project examined the diffusion of change within one Victorian TAPE Institute by engaging action research to facilitate implementation of e-mail technology. The theoretical framework involving the concepts of technology innovation and action research was enhanced with the aid of Rogers's (1983) model of the diffusion of the innovation process. Political and cultural factors made up the initiation phase of innovation, enabling the research to concentrate on the implementation phase of e-mail Roger's (1983) model also provided adopter categories that related to the findings of a Computer Attitude Survey that was conducted at The School of Mines and Industries Ballarat (SMB), now the University of Ballarat—TAPE Division since amalgamation on 1st January 1998. Despite management rhetoric about the need to utilise e-mail, Institute teaching staff lacked individual computers in their work areas and most were waiting to become connected to the Internet as late as 1997. According to the action research reports, many staff were resistant to the new e-mail facilities despite having access to personal computers whose numbers doubled annually. The action research project became focussed when action researchers realised that e-mail workshop training was ineffective and that staff required improved access. Improvement to processes within education through collaborative action research had earlier been achieved (McTaggart 1994), and this project actively engaged practitioners to facilitate decentralised e-mail training in the workplace through the action research spiral of planning, acting, observing and reflecting, before replanning. The action researchers * task was to find ways to improve the diffusion of e-mail throughout the Institute and to develop theoretical constructs. My research task was to determine whether action research could successfully facilitate e-mail throughout the Institute. A rich literature existed about technology use in education, technology teaching, gender issues, less about computerphobia, and none about 'e-mailphobia \ It seemed appropriate to pursue the issue of e-mailphobia since it was marginalised, or ignored in the literature. The major political and cultural influences on the technologising of SMB and e-mail introduction were complex, making it impossible to ascertain the relative degrees of influence held by Federal and State Governments, SMB's leadership or the local community, Nonetheless, with the implementation of e-mail, traditional ways were challenged as SMB's culture changed. E-mail training was identified as a staff professional development activity that had been largely unsuccessful. Action research is critical collaborative inquiry by reflective practitioners who are accountable for making the results of their inquiry public and who are self-evaluating of their practice while engaging participative problem-solving and continuing professional development (Zuber-Skerritt 1992, 1993). Action research was the methodology employed in researching e-mail implementation into SMB because it involved collaborative inquiry with colleagues as reflective practitioners. Thoughtful questions could best be explored using deconstructivist philosophy, in asking about the noise of silence, which issues were not addressed, what were the contradictions and who was being marginalised with e-mail usage within SMB. Reviewing literature on action research was complicated by its broad definition and by the variability of research (King & Lonnquist 1992), and yet action research as a research methodology was well represented in educational research literature, and provided a systematic and recognisable way for practitioners to conduct their research. On the basis of this study, it could be stated that action research facilitated the diffusion of e-mail technology into one TAPE Institute, despite the process being disappointingly slow. While the process in establishing the action research group was problematic, action researchers showed that a window of opportunity existed for decentralised diffusion of e-mail training,in preference to bureaucratically motivated 'workshops. Eight major findings, grouped under two broad headings were identified: the process of diffusion (planning, nature of the process, culture, politics) and outcomes of diffusion (categorising, e-mailphobia, the survey device and technology in education). The findings indicated that staff had little experience with e-mail and appeared not to recognise its benefits. While 54.1% did not agree that electronic means could be the preferred way to receive Institute memost some 13.7% admitted to problems with using the voice answering service on telephones. Some 43.3% thought e-mail would not improve their connectedness (how they related) to the Institute. A small percentage of staff had trouble with telephone voice-mail and a number of these were anxious computer users. Individualised tuition and peer support proved helpful to individual staff whom action researchers believed to be 'at risk', as determined from the results of a Computer Attitude Survey. An instructional strategy that fostered the development of self-regulation and peer support was valuable, but there was no measure of the effects of this action research program, other than in qualitative terms. Nevertheless, action research gave space to reflect on the nature of the underlying processes in adopting e-mail. Challenges faced by TAPE action researchers are integrally affected by the values within TAPE, which change constantly and have recently been extensive enough to be considered as a 'new paradigm'. The influence of competition policy, the training reform agenda and technologisation of training have challenged traditional TAPE values. Action research reported that many staff had little immediate professional reason to use e-mail Theoretical answers were submerged beneath practical professional concerns, which related back to how much time teachers had and whether they could benefit from e-mail. A need for the development of principles for the sound educational uses of e-mail increases with the internationalisation of education and an increasing awareness of cultural differences. The implications for conducting action research in TAPE are addressed under the two broad issues of power and pedagogy. Issues of power included gaining access, management's inability to overcome staff resistance to technology, changing TAPE values and using technology for conducting action research. Pedagogical issues included the recognition of educational above technological issues and training staff in action research. Finally, seventeen steps are suggested to overcome power and pedagogical impediments to the conduct of action research within TAPE. This action research project has provided greater insight into the difficulties of successfully introducing one culture-specific technology into one TAPE Institute. TAPE Institutes need to encourage more action research into their operations, and it is only then that -we can expect to answer the unanswered questions raised in this research project.