[pt] O ponto de partida desta tese é o debate em torno de políticas de ação afirmativa voltadas para afro- descendentes e estudantes oriundos de escolas públicas no Rio de Janeiro. No âmbito deste debate, lanço meu olhar para o papel da cultura escrita no interior do projeto de vir a ser universitário entre os setores populares. Afastando-me da ideologia do déficit, procuro enfrentar a discussão sobre a desigualdade imposta pelo sistema educacional no Brasil, no que diz respeito, especificamente, à relação dos setores populares com a cultura escrita. Com este objetivo, foram realizadas entrevistas e observação participante em duas universidades, sendo uma pública e outra privada. Houve, também, um processo de imersão em uma comunidade de baixa renda e, além disso, buscou-se estabelecer uma aproximação em três espaços de formação engajados nos movimentos de inclusão e permanência destes setores na universidade: um pré-vestibular comunitário e dois projetos desenvolvidos nas duas universidades com o objetivo de minimizar as dificuldades específicas apresentadas por estes grupos em relação à leitura e à escrita. Trabalhando com o conceito da leitura e da escrita como práticas sociais, a pesquisa aponta para a dimensão formadora da universidade (ao menos as que foram pesquisadas), menos por eventuais estratégias pedagógicas, mas, principalmente, por processos de socialização em uma comunidade de leitores formada por professores com nível de letramento elevado e um ambiente favorável. A universidade é apontada como um espaço propício à apreensão do habitus destas práticas, seus gestos e objetos que compõem um tipo de sociabilidade característico e que, por diversas razões, infelizmente, não se dá de forma satisfatória, ao longo dos ensinos fundamental e médio. / [en] The starting point of this thesis is the debate that surrounds affirmative action policy concerning African descendants, and students coming from public schools, in the state of Rio de Janeiro. In the context of this debate, the role of written culture is considered within the project of becoming a university student. Steering clear of deficit ideology, this thesis aims at confronting the discussion about inequalities determined by the Brazilian educational system, specifically concerning the relationship between the popular classes and written culture. Interviews and participant observations were carried out in two universities, one of them public and the other private. A process of immersion in a low-income community was carried out, as well as investigation of three educational spaces engaged in movements of inclusion and permanence of these groups in the university: a community admission examinations preparation course and two projects developed in the universities, the objective of which is to minimize the specific difficulties regarding reading and writing presented by members of these groups. Working with the concept of reading and writing as social practice, the research points to the formative dimension of university, less as a result of specific pedagogic strategies than through socialization processes in a community of readers composed of literate teachers and a propitious environment. The university is shown to be an advantageous space for the acquisition of the habitus of these practices, their gestures and objects, which comprise a characteristic kind of sociability that, unfortunately, for various reasons, is not satisfactorily accomplished during elementary and secondary education.

THESIS TITLE Children with Specific Language Impairment in the School Environment ABSTRACT The thesis focuses on children with specific language impairment (also called developmental dysphasia) in the school environment and it is divided into a theoretical and an empirical part. The theoretical part consists of four chapters. The first chapter describes specific language impairment and related terminology, defines a younger school-age child and also deals with causes, diagnosis and therapy of specific language impairment. The second chapter discusses social and communication skills of a child and the impact of specific language impairment on these skills. The third chapter concentrates on reading, writing and particular influences of specific language impairment which are associated with the development of other disorders and difficulties. The fourth chapter describes adaptation of a child with specific language impairment to the school environment. The empirical part consists of qualitative research, designed as multiple case studies, that was carried out among five younger school-age respondents. It attempted to determine how specific language impairment affects a child in the school environment and the empirical part contains results of this research. Besides the analysis and data interpretation, the...

Lesbian Detective Fiction: the outsider within is a creative writing thesis in two parts: a draft lesbian detective novel, titled Fatal Development (75%) and an exegesis containing a critical appraisal of the sub-genre of lesbian detective fiction, and of my own writing process (25%). Creative work: Fatal Development -- It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a dead body, but it didn’t seem to get any easier. -- When Dirk and Stacey discover a body in the courtyard of their Brisbane woolstore apartment, it is close friend and neighbour, Kersten Heller, they turn to for support. The police assume Stuart’s death was an accident, but when it emerges that he was about to take legal action against the woolstore’s developers, Bovine, Kersten decides there must be more to it. Her own apartment has flooded twice in a month and the builders are still in and out repairing defects. She discovers Stuart was not alone on the roof when he fell to his death and the evidence he had collected for his case against Bovine has gone missing. Armed with this knowledge, and fed up with the developer’s ongoing resistance to addressing the building’s structural issues, Kersten organises a class action against Bovine. Kersten draws on her past training as a spy to investigate Stuart’s death, hiding her activities, and details of her past, from her partner, Toni. Her actions bring her under increasing threat as her apartment is defaced, searched and bugged, and she is involved in a car chase across New Farm. Forced to fall back on old skills, old habits and memories return to the surface. When Toni discovers that Kersten has broken her promise to leave the investigation to the police, she walks out. The neighbouring – and heritage-listed – Riverside Coal development site burns to the ground, and Kersten and Dirk uncover evidence of a network of corruption involving developers and local government officials. After she is kidnapped in broad daylight, narrowly escaping from the boot of a moving car, Kersten is confident she is right, but with Toni not returning her calls, and many of the other residents selling up, including Dirk and Stacey, Kersten begins to question her judgment. In a desperate attempt to turn things around, Kersten calls on an old Agency contact to help prove Bovine was involved in Stuart’s death, her kidnapping, and ongoing corruption. To get the evidence she needs, Kersten plays a dangerous game: letting Bovine know she has uncovered their illegal operations in order to draw them into revealing themselves on tape. Hiding alone in a hotel room, Kersten is finally forced to confront her past: When Mirin didn’t come home that night, I was ready to go out and find her myself, disappear, and start a new life together somewhere far away. Instead they pulled me in before I could finish making arrangements, questioned me for hours, turned everything around. It was golden child to problem child in the space of a day. This time, she’s determined, things will turn out differently. Exegesis: The exegesis traces the development of lesbian detective fiction, including its dual origins in detective and lesbian fiction, to compare the current state of the sub-genre with the early texts and to establish the dominant themes and tropes. I focus particularly on Australian examples of the sub-genre, examining in detail Claire McNab’s Denise Cleever series and Jan McKemmish’s A Gap in the Records, in order to position my own lesbian detective novel between these two works. In drafting Fatal Development, I have attempted to include some of the political content and complexity of McKemmish’s work, but with a plot-driven narrative. I examine the dominant tropes and conventions of the sub-genre, such as: lesbian politics; the nature of the crime; method of investigation; sex and romance; and setting. In the final section, I explain the ways in which I have worked within and against the subgenre’s conventions in drafting a contemporary lesbian detective novel: drawing on tradition and subverting reader expectations. Throughout the thesis, I explore in detail the tradition of the fictional lesbian detective as an outsider on the margins of society, disrupting notions of power and gender. While the lesbian detective’s outsider status grants her moral agency and the capacity to achieve justice and generate change, she is never fully accepted. The lesbian detective remains an outsider within. For the lesbian detective, working within a system that ultimately discriminates against her involves conflict and compromise, and a sense of double-play in being part of two worlds but belonging to neither. I explore how this double-consciousness can be applied to the lesbian writer in choosing whether to write for a mainstream or lesbian audience.