Magister Artium - MA / In studies oor die swart Afrikaanse amateur gemeenskapsteater is voorheen beweer dat die platteland geen oorspronklike en noemenswaardige bydra gelewer het nie. Hiedie studie rig hom op aktiwiteite van hierdie aard in die Wolseley/CereslW oreester-area en bewys dié soort aannames verkeerd. Die swart Afrikaanse gemeenskapsteater van die area word hier beskryf gedokumenteer, maar terselfdertyd ook vergelyk met dit wat op dieselfde terrein in die stedelike gebiede van die Skiereiland plaasgevind het. Laasgenoemde was in die apartheidsjare meer dikwels openlik deel van die bevrydingstryd. Dit teenoor die meer sisteembevestigende aktiwiteite op die platteland. Oorsake hiervoor was onder meer die greep van die kerk op sy lidmate asook ook pogings om die gemeenskap van Ceres en omstreke op te beur ná die vernietigend aardbewing van 1969. Ook die verliese ná gedwonge verskuiwing ingevolge die Groepsgebiedewet is deur dié soort vermaak besweer. Hierteenoor het die middel jare tagtig 'n nuwe, militante generasie leerders op die verhoog gebring. Uit hulle het die streek se eerste anti-hegemoniese dramagroep voortgekom. Hulle het gesorg vir hulle eie treffende sisteem- kritiese drama. Hulle het ook grootliks bygedra om die gemeenskappe in die Boland en Karoo politiek bewus te maak. Die studie wil hierdie gemarginaliseerde teatergebeure aan die vergetelheid ontruk en so 'n bydra lewer tot 'n ewewigtiger Suid-Afrikaanse kultuurgeskiedenis. / South Africa

This practicum is an exploration of the meaning of spirituality in the discourse of landscape architects as a means of understanding how people experience the urban and public realm in a relational and community driven approach. The spiritual is discussed as a relationship between the dualisms of the ordinary and extraordinary and the strange and familiar. Further, multicentered neighbourhoods build attachment to place in diverse and unique ways that build strong communities that embrace difference and seek to embody those at the margins of society. Further communities that strive for plurality create broad openness that is welcoming and inclusive. Finally, the relational city is designed from a place of generosity such that territorial bounds are loosened and communities operate with great empathy. The neighbourhoods of Wolseley, Armstrong’s Point and West Broadway are explored in narrative and imagery to actualize the theory and create cause for five design interventions concluding each chapter. / February 2016

This thesis addresses the importance of the American Civil War to nineteenth-century European military education, and its influence on British staff officer training prior to World War I. It focuses on Garnet Wolseley, a Civil War observer who eventually became Commander in Chief of the Forces of the British Army. In that position, he continued to write about the war he had observed a quarter-century earlier, and was instrumental in according the Civil War a key role in officer training. Indeed, he placed Stonewall Jackson historian G.F.R. Henderson in a key military professorship. The thesis examines Wolseley’s career and writings, as well as the extent to which the Civil War was studied at the Senior Staff College, in Camberly, after Wolseley’s influence had waned. Analysis of the curriculum from the College archives demonstrates that study of the Civil War diminished rapidly in the ten years prior to World War I.

This thesis will examine the portrayal and reception of ‘novel’ technology as constructed spectacle in the military and popular coverage of the Abyssinian (1868) and Ashanti (1873-4) expeditions. It will be argued that new and ‘novel’ military technologies, such as the machine gun, Hale rocket, cartridge rifle, breach-loading cannon, telegraph, railway, and steam tractor, were made to serve symbolic roles in a technophile discourse that cast African expansion as part of a conquest of the natural world. There was a growing confidence in mid-Victorian Britain of the Empire’s dominant position in the world, focused particularly on technological development and embodied in exhibition culture. During the 1860s and ‘70s, this confidence was increasingly extended to the prospect of expansion into Africa, which involved a substantial development of the ‘idea’ of Africa in the British imagination. The public engagement with these two campaigns provides a window into this developing culture of imperial confidence in Britain, as well as the shifting and contested ideas of race, climate, and martial prowess. The expeditions also prompted significant changes to understandings of ‘small wars’, a concept incorporating several important pillars of Victorian culture. It will be demonstrated that discourses of technological superiority and scientific violence were generated in response to anxieties of the perceived dangers posed by the African interior. Accounts of the expeditions demonstrated a strong hope, desire to claim, and tendency to interpret that novel European technology could tame and subjugate the African climate, as well as African populations. This study contributes to debates over the popularity of imperialism in Victorian society. It ties the popularity of empire to the social history of technology, and argues that the Abyssinian and Ashanti expeditions enhanced perceptions of military capability and technological superiority in the Victorian imagination. The efficacy of European technology is not dismissed, but approached as a proximate cause of a shift in culture, termed ‘the technologisation of imperial rhetoric’.

Thesis (M.C.A.-Res.)--University of Wollongong, 2007. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references: leaf 49-54.