This thesis examines the impact of poetics and ideology on the French translations of eight contemporary heroine-centred and women-oriented fictional texts (including Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary). Using a systemic and descriptive framework (Toury 1995) as well as works on manipulation in translation (Lefevere 1992)(Venuti 1998), I explore the various ways in which these generically hybrid and ideologically complex texts have been rewritten according to the dominant poetics and ideology of the French roman sentimental. Interviews undertaken with editors and translators identify the perceived appeal of these texts to the French market: their romantic plot. As a comparative analysis of originals and translations reveals, this resulted in specific translational strategies regarding gender representations, notably poetological elements subverting a dominant model of romantic femininity. This thesis sheds light on the subtle differences between French and Anglo-American generic traditions and gender ideologies and its contribution is three-fold. Firstly, it adds to an emerging body of case studies which examine poetological and ideological revisions in the French translations of heroine-centred and womenoriented fictional texts (Cossy 2004, 2006, 2006a)(Le Brun 2003). Secondly, as the selection of a thematically – rather than formally – linked corpus of texts is still relatively uncommon in translation and intercultural studies, this thesis advances a new paradigm in the analysis of poetics and ideology in translation (Munday 2008): a self-reflexive approach which favours transversal examinations of specific aspects in thematically linked corpora. Thirdly, this study suggests that if women’s entertainment, produced and translated for mass consumption, reaches a broad audience worldwide and plays an important part in women’s socialisation, interdisciplinary studies of translations across forms can constitute a useful way of detecting the unspoken gender values of the cultures for which and by which they are produced.

This study examines two television soap operas and their consumption by a select group of teenagers. The soap operas in question, Neighbours and Home and Away, are produced in Australia and watched by large audiences in the UK. The study's broadest aim is to discover the nature of the relationship between the programmes and their teenage viewers. In order to meet this aim, the study combines textual analysis and audience research. Following a review of the textual analysis of soap opera, Neighbours and Home and Away are examined in detail as texts. The audience study is then introduced and located. The empirical study involved tape-recording interviews with groups of 13-16 year olds in one Edinburgh High School, and with individual teenagers in their own homes. In total, 50 teenagers were interviewed. The recurring findings of the audience study are analysed in detail. The final two chapters of the thesis contextualize the findings and conclusions of the textual and audience studies. A selective genealogy is provided which theoretically locates Neighbours and Home and Away and their consumption as cultural practices in self-government. It is argued that the two programmes should be understood as integral parts of a broad but specific arena for learning. It is argued that interviewees use Neighbours and Home and Away as cultural resources. They learn how to conduct themselves in intimate and social relationships, and, in particular, learn how to practise and reconstruct their gendered selves. It is argued that the model of analysis elaborated is valuable because: it best explains the specific nature of Neighbours and Home and Away and their consumption; it provides a way of moving beyond something of an orthodoxy in soap opera analysis; and it avoids the binary logic of some recent arguments about popular culture and social change.

During the last few decades the academic re-gendering has reached the field of rhetorical discourse and differences of speech and rhetoric has been determined. Another gender shift has occurred during the last few decades in the appointments of foreign policy representatives, from being one of the last patriarchal strongholds the change towards equality has been remarkably swift. However, the norms of masculinity and formality within the sphere of foreign policy are still persistent. The first aim of this thesis was to determine if the rhetorical style of men and women differed even in a context heavily laden with norms, such as the UNGA. The secondary aim is based upon the concept of masculinity and femininity in culture, to determine if the gender of culture influenced the speaker’s rhetorical style, even in the UNGA. This thesis generates its own theoretical framework from the works of rhetoric and linguistics to separate masculine and feminine rhetorical style. The method used is a qualitative textual analyze applied to transcribed speeches held by Swedish and U.S. representatives in UNGA. The analysis proved that there is a difference in rhetorical style between genders and culture, even in a context such as the UNGA, but only a small one.

This thesis examines the visual representations of elite women, who wielded and were seen to transgress, gendered political roles through their activity in the elite socio-political spheres of eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Britain. In analysing the portraits and satirical prints of this select breed of women, this study questions the common bifurcation of gender debates in existing secondary literature, which include, but are not limited to, the porosity of traditionally conceived public and private spheres, contested masculine and feminine identities, and the gendering of morals and vices. The study will explore how predominantly male artists represented these women alongside an examination of how elite women were able to manipulate and choreograph their own portrayal. As such, it will probe how these political women utilised portraiture as a crucial means of self-fashioning; and likewise how their satirical representation was routinely subjugated to the male gaze. In doing so, it will reveal the varieties, vagaries and subtleties of the political power held by women and how this could be iterated, celebrated, or criticised in the visual culture of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Britain. Four case studies form this examination. The first, argues that three women from Rockingham-Whig social networks, Lady Elizabeth Melbourne, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and Hon. Anne Damer, used portraiture as a form of self-fashioning to both celebrate their friendship and declare their burgeoning political agency. Chapter two revisits the 1784 Westminster election, to probe the theme of rivalry in satirical prints representing female canvassers. It argues that the visual vocabulary expressed in such prints pertains to wider cultural debates concerning class and gender that crucially came to a head during this political event. The third chapter introduces the dialogues between portraiture and satirical prints through its examination of the visual media that politicised Scottish Pittite hostess, Jane, Duchess of Gordon. Whilst the duchess used painted portraiture to proclaim her adherence to culturally-inscribed gender roles, satirical prints attacked her for her perceived political access, acquired through her daughters’ marriages and through her close proximity with prominent members of the Pittite government. The thesis concludes with a study of arguably the most political woman in the period of study: Queen Charlotte, consort of George III. This chapter revisits her reputation, arguing that a close examination of visual culture reveals that the queen, long thought to be an uncontroversial figure, became deeply problematic after the king’s bout with ‘madness’. In seeking to connect the visual aspects of women’s political engagement, this thesis expands on previous work in gender, social, cultural, and art histories such as those by Elaine Chalus, Cindy McCreery, Marcia Pointon, and Kate Retford to further our understanding of women’s political activity and eighteenth-century visual culture.

This thesis investigates elite and genteel women’s production and consumption of material objects in Britain during the period 1750-1830. Each of its four chapters identifies a central process that characterised these engagements with material culture, focusing on ‘Migration,’ ‘Description,’ ‘Translation,’ and ‘Exchange’ in turn. The Introduction examines each of these with regard to the historiography of eighteenth-century material culture and its relationship with gender, social relations, domesticity, and materiality. It argues that by viewing material culture through the lenses of microhistory and the case study, we might gain a sense not only of how individual women acquired, used, and conceived of objects, but also how this related to the broader processes by which material culture functioned during this period. Chapter 1 identifies the importance of needlework in the construction of prescribed feminine identities, and focuses on representations of needlework in portraiture, genre prints, and conduct literature. The chapter argues that such objects created a ‘grammar’ of respectable domestic femininity that migrated through visual, literary, and material genres, reflecting the permeability of cultural forms during this period. Chapter 2 examines the role of description in the journals and correspondence of the travel writer Caroline Lybbe Powys, concentrating on her 1756 tour of Norfolk. Following the work of the cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz, the chapter argues that the ‘thick description’ that characterises Lybbe Powys’s accounts of domestic visiting and tourism locates both the homes of her hosts and her own epistolary practices within an interpretative framework of hospitality, sociability, and materiality in which description was central. Chapter 3 considers the interior decoration of A la Ronde, the home of the cousins Jane and Mary Parminter, located in Exmouth in Devon. The chapter argues that the processes of translation that characterised the Parminters’ acquisition and display of their collection of souvenirs transformed these objects both physically and semantically, allowing the cousins to co-opt them into personal narratives, redolent of travel, the home, and the family. Chapter 4 focuses on Plas Newydd, the home of Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby. It examines how the gift exchange enacted at the house facilitated the creation of ‘gift relationships,’ which both reflected and constituted the connections between Butler and Ponsonby, their numerous friends and visitors to their home, between Plas Newydd and the surrounding landscape, and between material culture, experience, and sentiment, more broadly. Together, the constituent chapters of the thesis demonstrate that there was no simple connection between gender and material culture. However, by interrogating the key cultural processes in which this relationship operated, the thesis hopes to demonstrate the complexity and fluidity of its manifestations.

The Internet plays an increasingly significant role in people's lives. Poverty of data and research on Internet use and users is probably one of the most significant factors affecting the understanding of the Internet use and attitude in a conservative country and society such as Saudi Arabia. The aim of this research was to identify and analyse Saudi university students' use of the Internet, with particular emphasis on factors associated with, and influencing, female university students' attitude toward using the Internet. A mixed method approach was used utilising a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research techniques. It included a questionnaire to more than 700 male and female university students in King Saud University which incorporated questions on web and email use as well as an adopted Internet attitude scale from Tsai et al (2001). This was followed by series of focus group interviews with female students on Internet gender related issues. The study found that demographic variables are associated with Saudi university students' use of the Internet. Gender was found to be significantly associated with students' email usage, chatting, and feelings about the web. Culture also affected women's reasons for using the web, choice of websites visited, and web activities. It also influenced reasons for e-mail use and non-use, and the people with whom they communicated using email. Females in Saudi Arabia face many challenges when it comest o Interneta ccessa nd use. These barriers tend to be somewhat different than those faced by man. For Saudi females it is more cultural (i.e. family restrictions, lack of time) and psychological (i.e. security and privacy, internet complexity). The majority of students had positive attitudes towards using the Internet. Female students were as positive in their attitude as male students. However, females had real or perceived difficulties in their ability to control their Internet usage. Considering the scarcity of previous literature in this particular context (Saudi Arabia), this research provides an original and comprehensive contribution to knowledge regarding Internet use and attitude among university male and female students.

This dissertation examines a community of men who write online parenting blogs—known as “dad bloggers.” The emergence of dad bloggers in North America is nascent, under-researched, and a result of recent shifts in work-family arrangements, gender expectations, and the proliferation of social media technologies. Accordingly, this dissertation is designed to provide three distinct, yet interrelated, contributions to the literature on: families and parenthood; gender and masculinities; and media communications and communities. Taking a cyber-ethnographic approach, this is the first study of dad bloggers to collect online and offline data in order to investigate personal, interpersonal, and public meaning-making practices. The entire dataset consists of 1,430 blog posts written by 45 bloggers, approximately 50 hours of fieldwork conducted at The Dad 2.0 Summit conferences from 2016 to 2018, and 5 in-depth interviews. In three substantive chapters, I address: (1) the collective actions and goals that shape dad bloggers’ group culture and public engagement; (2) the creation and dissemination of meanings for fatherhood in an online context; and (3) the negotiation of gendered family roles and articulation of masculinity discourses by fathers. Collectively, this research provides new empirical and theoretical insights about the social construction of fatherhood in the contemporary digital age. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis addresses one of the major challenges facing education systems in developing countries: that of how to include all children, particularly those from relatively disadvantaged communities. It looks, in particular, at the example in Nepal of children from the Dalit communities, a group known to be disadvantaged and often marginalized within the formal education system. In particular, the study attempts to investigate the barriers that prevent the educational access, participation and progress of these students at the secondary level. This theme was investigated using an ethnographic approach, which examined people's life experiences and culture in natural settings (within schools and in their communities) using data collected through a series of interviews, and observations. It also involved an analysis of the relevant literature and policy documents. What was found is that the reasons for children from the Dalit community being disadvantaged are many and complex. Broadly, they can be summarized as being, first of all, about the difficulties of implementing national policies, particularly in terms of making resources available and providing effective monitoring, even though these policies are very positive about the inclusion of these children. Secondly, it is about the expectations and attitudes amongst the various Dalit communities as to what they want for their children and young people, which are to do with tradition and culture, life styles and economic circumstances. Thirdly, these two sets of factors together put pressure on the schools, which have to find a way of dealing with the challenge of diversity and various expectations. In this way, this research provides some new understanding of the issues that bear on the education of Dalit children. The knowledge gained through this research has practical implications for stakeholders: policy makers, teachers, and Dalit community members and social workers. It is argued that this would help to foster the improvement of policy initiatives and their effective implementation. It could also help to bring changes in the existing attitudes of teachers and Dalit communities that may have a positive impact on Dalit children's integration into education. Most importantly, it has brought a new way of looking at these issues that can be used to inform public debate. The study illustrates the use of a methodology that might usefully be adopted by researchers carrying out research around similar themes in other developing countries. It might also be the case that the barriers that have been identified in Nepal would represent useful starting points for such research.

Mit dem Begriff der Intersektionalität wird die Verschränkung verschiedener Ungleichheit generierender Strukturkategorien, wie Geschlecht, Ethnizität, Klasse, Nationalität, Sexualität, Alter etc. erfasst. Er soll aufzeigen, dass keine dieser Kategorien alleine steht, sondern sowohl für sich als auch im Zusammenspiel mit den anderen einen die gesellschaftlichen Machtverhältnisse mitkonstituierenden Effekt hat. Die historischen Wurzeln liegen im 19. Jahrhundert und gehen auf die Erfahrungen Schwarzer Frauen und Lesben zurück, die sich im Feminismus westlicher weißer Mittelschichtsfrauen nicht wiederfanden. Leslie McCall unterscheidet drei methodologische Zugänge: den anti-kategorialen Ansatz, den intra-kategorialen Ansatz und den inter-kategorialen Ansatz.