This thesis uses affect theory and studies of emotion to analyse literary representations of the everyday in fictional and non-fictional writing about Muslim migrant women in the UK from 1906 to 2012. Postcolonial literary studies tend to value exceptional events over mundane life, which causes possible issues of exoticism and a danger of homogenising distinct experiences. This thesis offers a theorisation of migration that foregrounds everyday experience through an engagement with theories of objects, bodies and space, as well as emotional experiences that are specific to migrant subjectivity. It analyses two groups of texts: early twentieth century travel writing by Atiya Fyzee, Shahbano Begum Maimoona Sultan and Zeyneb Hanoum, and contemporary literary texts by Yeshim Ternar, Farhana Sheikh, Monica Ali, Leila Aboulela, Elif Shafak and Fadia Faqir. The thesis is structured thematically into three sections, each section containing two chapters, one about travel writing and another about contemporary texts. In the first section, in order to examine how the texts negotiate foreignness in daily life, I consider hospitality theory, which describes how social power relations are based on roles of host and guest. In the second section, I argue that melancholia is an emotional experience endemic to migrancy. The texts demonstrate how this emotion is manifest communally as well as individually, which also shows the political potential of emotion. In the third section, I investigate how emotional processes of migration are described spatially in the texts. The findings of this research show that emotional knowledge is a major concern for migrant writers as a way of engaging with and critiquing the social and political climates of each text. This is produced through narrations about feeling in general and specific emotions, such as irritation or anxiety. Emotional experience is illustrated in conjunction with identities that are both fluid and intersectional, where gender and class converge with ethnicity and religion. The texts also show specifically affective styles of writing that concentrate on focalising women's intimate experiences through, for example, diary entries, bildungsroman or psychological realism. While the differing contexts reflect the particularities of each experience, there are sufficient similarities of narrative content and style to suggest that affective experience is a major concern for this body of literature. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the productive uses of affect theory as a critical stance for analysing postcolonial literature.

I identify and analyse an emergent sub-genre of contemporary literature by women that I am calling ‘New Femininities’ fiction. This fiction is about the distinctly feminine experience of contemporary domestic life written by women about the lives of heterosexual female characters that are married or in committed partnerships, often with children. These texts are concerned with the nature of the self, with a self that is plural and ‘in process’, and make use of particular narrative devices – ironic voice, unreliable narration, free indirect discourse, and interrogative endings that exceed their roles as simply telling stories. ‘New Femininities’ fictions allow their language the necessary freedom to multiply meanings and enact the narrative conflicts they raise and by so doing, undermine the binary oppositions which structure a gendered world. In this dissertation, I argue the models of existing criticism would do a disservice to these texts because much of the criticism either overvalues the theoretical and ignores the literariness of the text or seeks to identify a ‘feminine’ language the definition of which serves to reinforce and revalue patriarchal notions of femininity. The readings that this fiction requires necessitate a negotiation with established models of feminist literary criticism. I attempt to identify the characteristics of their style that allows them to straddle binary oppositions and to look at the language these authors use without having to label it ‘feminine’ and by so doing establish, build, or reinforce a boundary with some undefined ‘masculine’ language which stands in for all occurrences that are not ‘feminine’. Additionally, I attempt to forge a transformed, adapted concept vocabulary for dealing with this group of writers. To this end, I make use of various discourses to show how the different authors either negotiate with that discourse or prove its inadequacy to describe or explain these new femininities.

In the last two decades, in media and political discourses, Italianness has been increasingly represented as a homogeneous and compact entity, which is intruded on and contaminated by immigrants. In this study, the binary opposition between Italians and migrants is investigated from the perspective of writers who inhabit a liminal space, between at least two cultures, with the main intent to problematize the binary itself and to show its nature of fabrication. On the basis of Said's contrapuntal method, the novels by Ghermandi, Scego, Ali Farah and Lakhous are thought to establish a counterpoint with dominant discourses about Italianness. With the firm belief that discourses about postcolonial Italy must address its colonial past, the works analysed are considered as in dialogue with both colonial and postcolonial discourses. A dialogical relation is established, within the study, between Ghermandi's Regina di fiori e di perle and Flaiano's Tempo di uccidere. Written from the perspectives of the colonized and the colonizers respectively, both novels unveil colonial crimes and faults in Ethiopia, thus being counter-narratives about official representations of Italian colonialism. In Scego's Rhoda and Oltre Babilonia and Ali Farah's Madre piccolo, like threads, the individual stories of Somali exiles intertwine to create a fabric, whose pattern reveals the importance of the legacy of colonialism within contemporary Italy. Mainly situated between Italian and Somali cultures, the protagonists experience traumas, suffering and loss but finally attain a contrapuntal awareness between the two cultural poles. They become conscious of how enriching their in-between position is; they affirm the value of their hybrid identity. With a further zoom into postcolonial Italy, Lakhous' Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio and Divorzio all'islamica a viale Marconi analyse the binary ‘us-Italians' versus ‘thosemigrants' in two microcosms in Rome. General polarizations such as Islam and the West emerge as factors which are exploited in order to exacerbate tensions and divisions. In addition, Italianness appears to be an internally fragmented entity, which is imagined as compact and homogeneous, as a reaction to the influx of immigrants. Against any logic of binarism, the novels by Ghermandi, Scego, Ali Farah and Lakhous reveal the constant effort to create a passage between two poles and to uphold a dialogical relation between them; crossings over and hybridity are continuously affirmed. With their highly important affirmation of multiplicity, the works challenge any essentializing notion of identity and any narrow representation of Italianness, within multiethnic contemporary Italy.

The White Revolution was a set of six reform measures put to the Iranian people via referendum on 6 Bahman 1341 (26 January 1963), based on a plan for social justice linked with economic development, encased in the concept of a bloodless revolution from the top. This did not happen unexpectedly; it was the culmination of events spanning several years, which accelerated during the John F. Kennedy Presidency. Various plans and reforms paved the way for the White Revolution and certain events as well as political and economic developments encouraged reform. There were similarities between plans and some reforms influenced others, or were shaped to suit different agendas. All played a part in instigating the White Revolution. This included Prime Minister ʻAlī Amīnī’s 15-point plan, the Shah’s Royal Farmān, the Third Development Plan, and the six-points of the White Revolution itself. The question this thesis seeks to answer is to what extent the Kennedy administration was responsible for instigating the White Revolution by influencing the various steps that paved the way for the 6 Bahman referendum?The United States had at its disposal various means by which it might apply pressure and influence development. This included, economic aid, military assistance, numerous advisers, agencies on the ground, plus support for the Shah and other Iranians. Given the Kennedy administration’s association with modernisation and development, the existing historiography has portrayed this period in US-Iranian relations as one of increased pressure on the Shah to reform with the White Revolution being the result of such pressure. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by challenging this portrayal by providing the first detailed, analysis of the period 1961-63, utilising a vast array of newly released documents. This is not the first study to conclude agency on the part of Iran for the White Revolution, but is the first to do so though a detailed, balanced approach, which doesn’t ignore the significance of the US-Iranian relationship. Thus, this thesis is at the forefront of revisionist accounts of US-Iranian relations during the Cold War critiquing the portrayal of the Shah and others as mere tools of the US and reaching the conclusion that contrary to widely held beliefs it was Iranians rather than Americans who instigated the White Revolution by initiating and directing reform.

Magister Scientiae (Medical Bioscience) - MSc(MBS) / Introduction: Eurycoma longifolia (Tongkat Ali; TA) is a Malaysian shrub used to treat various illnesses including male infertility. Considering that TA is also used to improve male fertility and no report regarding its safety has been published, this study investigated the effects of a patented, aqueous TA extract on various sperm and testicular functions. Materials and Methods: This study encompasses two parts (part 1: on spermatozoa; part 2: on TM3-Leydig and TM4-Sertoli cells). Part 1: Semen samples of 27 patients and 13 fertile donors were divided into two groups, washed and swim-up prepared spermatozoa, and incubated with different concentrations of TA (1, 10, 20, 100, 2000 μg/ml) for 1 hour at 37°C. A sample without addition of TA served as control. After incubation with TA, the following parameters were evaluated: viability (Eosin-Nigrosin test), total and progressive motility (CASA), acrosome reaction (triple stain technique), sperm production of reactive oxygen species (ROS; dihydroethidium test; DHE), sperm DNA fragmentation (TUNEL assay) and mitochondrial membrane potential (Δψm) (Depsipher kit). Part 2: TM3-Leydig and TM4-Sertoli cells incubated with different concentrations of TA (0.4, 0.8, 1.6, 3.125, 6.25, 12.5, 25, 50 μg/ml) and control (without extract) for 48 and 96 hours. After incubation with TA, the following parameters were evaluated: viability (XTT), cell proliferation (protein assay), testosterone (testosterone ELISA test) and pyruvate (pyruvate assay). Results Part 1: For washed spermatozoa, significant dose-dependent trends were found for viability, total motility, acrosome reaction and sperm ROS production. However, these trends were only significant if the highest concentrations were included in the calculation. In the swim-up spermatozoa, ROS production of spermatozoa showed a biphasic relationship with its lowest percentage at 10 μg/ml, yet, no significance could be observed (P=0.9505). No influence of TA could be observed for sperm DNA fragmentation nor Δψm. Part 2: The viability rates and protein production of TM3-Leydig and TM4-Sertoli cells at 48-hour exposure to TA showed increases whereas at 96-hour incubation periods viability and protein production declined especially as from concentration 25 μg/ml TA. Similar results could be seen for TM4-Sertoli cells pyruvate production. The testosterone production at 48-hour exposure marginally increased (P=0.0580) at the highest (50 μg/ml) concentration of TA. However, at 96-hour exposure to TA the testosterone production significantly (P=0.0065) increased. It is also apparent that after 96 hours the concentration of testosterone has increased [12 x 10-4 ng/ml] when compared to 48-hour exposure [6 x 10-7ng/ml] of Tongkat Ali. Conclusion: Part 1: Results indicate that the Tongkat Ali extract has no deleterious effects on sperm functions at therapeutically used concentrations (<2.5 μg/ml). Part 2: The cytotoxic effect of TA are only presented at higher concentration from 25 μg/ml. TM3-Leydig cells appears to be more resilient than TM4-Sertoli cells in viability and protein production yet at prolonged periods of exposure it is detrimental. Testosterone production only increases after 96 hours exposure to TA.

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Human beings encounter cascades of a plethora of experiences, one after another, every single microsecond of our lives. There are many things happening around. The world is full of events and occurrences. As they happen, the mind reacts to every individual input. This is a very exhausting and difficult. Thus, people have developed a process of self-defense against this horrible mishmash of information. Their minds have this amazing capacity of sorting them out and making sense out of them. Humankind's survival depends on that. If one does not sort all this information out, one might not be able to make a simplest decision. As humans process the information, they learn to ignore and forget. They focus on their feelings and emotions. They forget the logic. The oversimplification process begins. Humans create rigid systems of oversimplified formulas. They assign adjectives to things, occurrences, and other people. The number of those adjectives is small. After assigning, those adjectives obscure everything else. A new world is created, stupid, limited, lazy, and in the end making humans very easy to control. What starts as a basic survival process ends up as a tool one can use to destroy the owners of the mind. In the end, the birth of consciousness leads to its death. My work fights this process. It aims to put a person back into that state of shock created by a mishmash of information and thus create the rebirth of consciousness.

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This study deals with modern mission history in north eastern Africa. When the rigid Islamistic Mahdi regime in the Sudan was defeated by an Anglo-Egyptian army in 1898, H G Guinness and K Kumm came to Aswan and initiated the Sudan Pionier Mission (SPM) in 1900. The SPM had its spiritual roots in the Holiness Movement and became an interdenominational German-based faith mission. Although the SPM was started in Aswan to advance from there to the south to evangelize animistic people groups in the Eastern Sudan, the SPM actually consolidated its work in and around Aswan for internal and external reasons. Thus, the focus of the SPM shifted from an animistic to an Islamic audience with a special emphasis on the Nile-Nubians occupying the Nile valley between Aswan and Dongola. This study contributes generally to the historiography of the SPM between 1990 until 1966 and analyzes especially the development of the SPM into a mission among the Nile-Nubians during this period. The ethnic groups of the Nile-Nubians will be introduced and their historical, political, social, economic, linguistic and religious situation will be presented. This thesis further describes the topographical development of the SPM and its missiological approach. A special emphasis is given to the life story of the Kunuuzi Nubian convert Samu’iil Ali Hiseen (SAH-1863-1900) and his multifaceted contribution to the work of the SPM. SAH was the first Nubian evangelist in modern times and the major stakeholder of the Nubian vision. Neither the history of the SPM as “Nubian Mission” nor the life and work of SAH have been researched and presented before. / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)