The Aboriginal settlement known as ‘The Block’, Aboriginal Redfern or Eveleigh Street, forms an Aboriginal neighbourhood in inner Sydney. Since its deliberate and largely unexpected formalisation in 1973, this urban Aboriginal presence continues to unsettle the largely non-Aboriginal community that surrounds it and geographically binds it in place. The Block was founded as the ‘Black Capital of Australia’ and stakes a claim in the heart of Australia’s first and most prominent city, Sydney. The ‘return’ of Aboriginality, however, to a place from which it had been banished, remains a (post)colonial paradox.

Master of Letters (with Merit) / The objective of this paper is to examine the self-portrait paintings of Frida Kahlo and to explore the way in which they articulate a ‘self’ and ‘identity’ through creating an innovative feminine vocabulary. The aim of this creative research is to explore the way in which Frida Kahlo represented her sexual subjectivity in the body of self-portraits she produced in her short life time. The self-portraits, some of which were produced in a state of severe physical disability and chronic illness, were also created in the shadow of her famous partner- socialist Mexican muralist/ revolutionary Diego Rivera. An examination of the significant body of self-portrait paintings produced by Frida Kahlo, informed by her personal letters, poems, and photographs, broadens the conventional definitions of subjective self beyond the generic patterns of autobiographical narrative, characteristic of an inherently masculine Western ‘self’. In Kahlo’s self-portraits the representation of the urban Mexican proletarian woman-child draws stylistically from the domain of European self-portraiture, early studio photographic portraiture, and the biographical Mexican Catholic retablo art, with its indebtedness to the ancient Aztec Indian symbology of self.

In 1957 Ghana became the first nation in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve independence from a European colonial power. During this time Kwame Nkrumah’s government concerned itself with the creation of a national identity that would speak to the new African Personality and Nkrumah’s Pan-African goals. In Nkrumah’s national project, regional cultural and economic contributions were at times subsumed. The absence of an identifiable national cuisine is a lens into ethnic conflict generated in part by the crafting of the national identity. I argue that in general the absence of a national cuisine represents the strength of the desire to maintain regional cultural boundaries in Ghana. Additionally, the structural challenges that Ghana faces, and apprehension surrounding its colonial legacy, impede the development of a national cuisine.

This essay explored the possibilities of Nineteen Eighty-Four being read as a critique of British colonialism in Kenya. The questions I have tried to answer are: What are the significant aspects found in Nineteen Eighty-Four that correlate to postcolonial literature? What are the significant parallels drawn between Orwell’s Airstrip One and the British colonial state in Kenya? In regards to similarities between Oceania and colonial Kenya, do they shed a new light on Nineteen Eighty-Four in terms of themes? I have tried to answer these questions by using the theory of postcolonialism, and reference literature from colonial Kenya. This ultimately led to many similarities made apparent between Nineteen Eighty-Four and colonial Kenya.

This dissertation comprises a musical history and ethnography of musical culture on the island of Mauritius in the southern Indian Ocean. It details two interrelated performance traditions, examining the history and practice of European art music on the island in parallel with that of an endemic song-and-dance tradition called séga. Mauritius, once a notorious nest of pirates and privateers, was a famous overseas haven of French culture during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wealth from trade, war, and piracy fueled a rich cultural scene that featured the latest music from Western Europe. Visitors to "The Little Paris of the Indian Ocean" also encountered séga, a percussion-driven music based on improvised songs and dances that developed amongst the island's African and Malagasy slaves. Today, séga is an integral part of the Mauritian tourism industry and is prominently featured in government cultural and educational programs. The general format of the dissertation is a musical history of Mauritius from its first human settlement in 1638 to the present day. It draws extensively on unpublished archival documents and on travelogues, letters, and diaries from visitors to provide specific details about the extent and nature of musical practice in Mauritius. It is also informed by historical newspapers, contemporaneous literature, and by recent discoveries in Mauritian archaeology. The narrative of the past half-century of Mauritian musical and cultural history takes the form of a musical ethnography and draws upon numerous interviews and on field research conducted in Mauritius from 2011-2012. The dissertation also includes a detailed study of music in contemporary Mauritian society, with special reference to the use of séga in nation-building policies, identity politics, the tourism industry, and in public education.

The constant mutability of cultures as they meet and mix provides an ongoing laboratory in which to explore human dynamics. In this dissertation, I analyze the process and results of one indigenous-colonial encounter in Dutch Indonesia, using archaeological evidence from Banten, Java that illuminates interactions between Bantenese elites and Dutch East India Company (VOC) soldiers in the 17th to early 19th century. Banten, a global trade center and the focal point of Dutch expansion in Asia, had a cosmopolitan and multinational society of long standing, already apparent when the Dutch arrived in 1596. My research shows that a kind of "reverse" colonialism occurred here. Bantenese cultural influences penetrated more deeply into Dutch culture than the other way around, so that colonial Dutch culture took on a new, hybridized identity. Utensils and vessels necessary for preparing and serving meals from excavations in the indigenous Sultan's Surosowan Palace, its surrounding Fort Diamond manned by VOC soldiers, and the Dutch headquarters at Fort Speelwijk provide the evidence. Petrographic and archaeological study indicate that the Dutch used locally produced Bantenese-style cooking vessels and lids, rather than import European tripod pots to accommodate their traditional open-fire cooking. Local Bantenese continued to use cooking stoves without tripod vessels, maintaining their culinary habits. VOC archives revealed a change in Dutch staple food from bread to rice. Hired male cooks and local women who prepared home meals (as wives and concubines) acted as cultural conduits, while vibrant local manufacturing and trade made local goods readily available. Thus Dutch cooking became hybridized with locally available vessels and ingredients. The Banten results differed from the Dutch Cape Colony in South Africa but were similar to the Dejima trading post in Japan where the Dutch relied on local products. I conclude that proximity and daily interactions with the host society were crucial for shaping Dutch responses to the new environments and creating hybrid culture, instead of replicating their homeland. This study places Banten on the global map of cross-cultural interactions and colonial discourse; I hope to stimulate other researchers to test my hypotheses and build on these interpretations. / 2016-12-31T00:00:00Z

This thesis explores English representations of America and Americans from the 'discovery' in 1492 to the establishment of the Jamestown colony in 1607. In examining this earlier period of English engagement with the New World, this thesis aims to illustrate the many ways that sixteenth-century understandings of America impacted the development of English colonial discourse, from shaping where colonies should be located, to influencing how native populations should be incorporated into colonising schemes. In particular, this thesis establishes two fundamental sixteenth-century approaches to the construction of English colonial ideology: the use of continental European portrayals of America that were manipulated and adapted to meet the discursive demands of early English projects in the New World and the selective appropriation of frameworks of knowledge, both old and new, that were employed in an attempt to explain the new lands across the Atlantic. The following chapters analyse the various processes by which an English colonial discourse, focused on America, came into being. This thesis assesses how English colonisers and explorers constructed the theory of empire using Old World frameworks of understanding, examines how explorative failures and an oscillating English religious, economic, and cultural landscape affected early English colonial discourse, and explores how the practicalities of English trade and settlement in the New World manifested themselves in descriptions of native appearance and behaviour and in accounts of the American environment. By employing a methodology of 'thick' contextualisation and close reading, and by interpreting travel narratives and colonial texts as sites where rhetoric, inter-textual influences, and cultural priorities converge, this thesis enhances historical understandings of the development of English colonial ideology. The formation of early English colonial discourse took place within an international framework of European rivalry and shared cultural heritage and a domestic context of fluctuating economic, political, and religious circumstances. This discourse, which was first articulated in the sixteenth century, was therefore the product of a complex process of assimilation, manipulation, colonial competition, and cultural appropriation.

This thesis will explore the impact of gender, class and colonialist issues on the life and fictions of Welsh novelist and short-story writer Dorothy Edwards. Although largely a literary analysis, this thesis also includes new biographical material which suggests that the class and gender ideologies that influenced her early years became key to her writing. After an introduction presenting the arguments of the thesis, the first two chapters are both primarily aimed at establishing the context of Edwards‟ work, the first in terms of her community and life history, and the second in terms of literary context. Chapter one locates Edwards firmly in her social and historical context, in part by means of new and exciting information discovered in a recent deposit of manuscripts pertaining to Edwards held at the University of Reading. In chapter two I argue that Edwards can be placed within the female modernist tradition as a result of her experimentation with narrative perspective in her 1927 short-story collection Rhapsody and her particular utilisation of the short story form. The central body of this thesis consists of a literary re-analysis of Edwards‟ work in the light of feminist and postcolonial theory, alongside a class-based reading of her fictions. Edwards‟ work cries out for analysis in terms of feminist theory, and her depiction of female roles and female sexuality in Rhapsody forms the focus of chapter three. Most if not all of Edwards‟ women are assigned to a marginalized position, and I explore the implications this has regarding her concept of gender relations. Edwards‟s depiction of social class in her fictions is particularly interesting; accordingly, chapter four offers a discussion of the representation of class in her 1928 novel Winter Sonata. I argue that here, more clearly than in her short stories, she deconstructs the constrictive nature of class boundaries and expectations and the effects these have on male and female, working- and middle-class characters alike. I return in chapter five to the details of Edwards‟ life, this time during the much overlooked and misunderstood period following the publication of Winter Sonata, much of which she spent in the company of the Bloomsbury group when visiting or living in London. The final chapter of this thesis analyses the literary produce of Edwards‟ time in London in the light of postcolonial theory; I suggest that the idea of a pervasive and mentally colonising cultural imperialism is key to understanding Edwards‟ work. The thesis ultimately aims to demonstrate that an analysis of Edwards‟ literary output in the context of current theoretical paradigms, together with new biographical information discovered in archival sources, reveals that issues of class, gender and colonialism are central to the work of Dorothy Edwards, as indeed they were to the Wales in which she was born and raised.

This study aims to investigate and analyse certain aspects regarding the current condition of the Philippines. Both of its culture and its polities, approached within perspectives of historical epochs of colonialism and its aftermaths regarding post-colonial discourse. The contemporary society of the Philippines has been deeply imprinted by its colonial legacies and left a profound mark on its culture, tradition and the development of its politics both from the institutional perspectives and international context. This project aims to confront some of the structural roots and causes that contribute to its national crisis such as mass poverty and the persisting oppression that permeates within the society of the Philippines, regarding its national identity and its global status as a former colony under western powers. The context of this project is about the enduring and uneasy relationship between the Philippines and the former western hegemonic powers, Spain in the late 15th century and the United States in the early 19th century, that have assumed territorial border in the archipelago. In which it has subsequently determined and consolidated, however constrained and inescapable, many of the historical, cultural and political formations that have influenced developmental trajectories in the Philippines Society.

In Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is central to political discourses and educational concerns as a means for economic development, poverty alleviation, youth employment, and social mobility. Yet, there is an intriguing contradiction between this consideration and the real attention dedicated to TVET. Research on African TVET is varied, but tends to be narrowly focused on issues of policies, economic strategies, cost-efficiency, curriculum contents, and outdated equipment. Offering an alternative inquiry, the purpose of this conceptual dissertation was to use critical education theory and post-colonial insights to explore the macro and micro challenges SSA TVET systems are facing in a global context. Indeed, in the era of economic and cultural globalization, the African continent has the opportunity to make its way toward socioeconomic development. Still, rich countries are getting richer and the poor poorer. The African continent is rich in natural, mineral, agricultural, human, and intellectual resources. Thus, there are opportunities for well-being and educational prosperity. However, all statistics show that Africans are the poorest in the world. I argue that this poverty is socially constructed and not an inevitable condition for Africans. Unemployment is a tough reality in SSA. The number of students enrolling in TVET is increasing. From the critical and post-colonial conceptual framework I illustrate structural and systematic concerns to show how SSA TVET systems involve oppression, exploitation, marginalization, prejudice, stereotypes, gender discrimination, reproduction, hegemony, and subalternity. Through the concept of democratic education Dewey and Freire offer, I envision, idealistically and realistically, a holistic and emancipatory TVET where the main concern would not just be to train hands but also heads. In so doing, SSA TVET could develop students' critical awareness about citizenship, self-determination, and problem-solving in order to create social cohesion, peace, and stability in Africa.