Constructing Voices is a narrative case study exploring the experiences of young women as they participated in a major public art performance project. I followed the process and production of Turning Point and Under Construction over the course of one year. Under the direction of American performance artist and educator Suzanne Lacy, this Vancouver, Canada based art project and performance sought to empower participating young women; to help them fin their voice and to provide them with a forum so that they might challenge and alter public perception and stereotypes of young women in the mass media. Seven young women from Turning Point and three local organizers, including the project and performance producer, have offered their narratives to inform this study. Together, they take us behind the scenes of a huge and complex community art project and performance. Their stories help us find meaning amidst the contradictions inherent in art productions of this magnitude. I approach this inquiry from a constructivist paradigm, informed by postmodern feminism. Through this research I call for a collaborative art practice which is reflexive, critical and egalitarian - one in which power is shared and where representation is determined by those whose lives are displayed. To inform our future artistic and educational practices, we need to turn to those pedagogical frameworks that best correspond to the intended goals of the projects. In the case of Turning Point and Under Construction, we need to look to feminist, emancipatory and performance art pedagogies. Only by informing our practices in this way, can these projects provide the opportunity for individuals to achieve a heightened engagement with their world - to learn through currere. In this narrative case study, we hear from young women at turning points in their lives. They believe what they say has value and should be heard by others. Performance art has the potential to be a rich site for learning so long as the process is congruent with the goals of the art project. As art educators we can respond to these narratives in our practices by providing environments for learning where participants/learners can find their own ideas and voices while expressing themselves in personally meaningful ways.

This article explores the roles that porcelain portraits on grave markers play in identity construction and performance. Through semi-structured interviews, the biographies of five individuals are examined and then compared to determine norms or differences regarding their views on sepulchral photographs as a form of memorialization. While the decision to display a gravestone portrait could simply be a long-standing cultural practice, this interpretivist study indicates that the role of photo-tombstones is negotiated through a hybridization process involving religious syncretism, cultural convergence, or familial expectations. The role of photography as material culture is also examined, both as a metonymic replacement for the deceased and for its links to memory recall and remembrance.

It is 30 years after Post-Mao reforms, 20 years after Tiananmen Square demonstrations, and the next generation of “comrades” are emerging in China. They are called the Balinghou or “Post- 80s” generation, referring to the cohort born between 1980 and 1989. This study addresses an empirical gap by exploring the narrative resources Shanghai’s Post-80s young adults call on to construct their identities, given the historical situation in which they live. This exploration is achieved through qualitative empirical data by employing a combination of narrative analysis and ethnography. Data analysis uncovers narrative resources clustered around three common themes: generational identity, structural resources, and personal lives. Further refection reveals that the extent to which identity is narratively expressed can be culturally constrained. Although the Balinghou encounter unique external factors such as the One Child Policy and rapid economic growth and reform in China, their narrative identity resources are more related to their perceptions of life stages than unprecedented historical circumstance. Keywords: narrative, identity, life course, symbolic interactionism, China, Shanghai, Balinghou, Post-80s generation

Through a layered account format combining theory, performative autoethnographic vignettes, and dialogical exchanges, the author explores the performances of Supermotherhood as they materialize within her life and potentially within the lives of, and through interactions with, other mothers inside and outside of her immediate peer group. The author analyses the ways the pervasive ideology of perfect mothering manifests itself within motherhood culture, and how it ultimately impacts maternal agency, self worth, and by extension, the family unit, and the culture of motherhood-mothering in general. Guided by a feminist poststructuralist approach, the author argues that the Supermom, or rather, Super Mom meta-identity offers all subjective labels and ideologies of mothering a place to become and celebrate possibility, individuality, transition, and maternal empowerment. Keywords: mothering; feminism; performative identity; autoethnography; poststructuralist feminism; maternal empowerment; layered account

Labour stability and strong community organization can be achieved in Northern towns only by fostering among recent arrivals a commitment to permanent settlement in town. Migrational processes associated with the development of commitment are therefore central to the industrialization and urbanization of the North. Exploratory field research in a Northern Quebec mining town was carried out over a 3 1/2 year period, in which commitment was studied through an ethnoscientific study of migrants' social identities. Conceptualization emphasized two theoretical perspectives that have been employed in psychological anthropology, interactionist social psychology and ethnoscience (or cognition). Conceptual relationships between these fields have been noted by many authors, but unfortunately interconnections have not been exploited in most applications of either theoretical base. Research focused on one small sector of the area of overlap, concerned with what Wallerstein has called 'social definition'. The project centers around a concept of 'social identity' which denotes one social psychological factor that (along with others) influences social interaction in a given society. At the same time, 'conceptual systems' of social categories (which are, Stone informs us, social identities) are examined through 'ethnosociology'--the ethnoscientific study of social knowledge as a cultural phenomenon. Migrants and their commitment are scrutinized in migrants' self-definitions and in their social understandings that signal the possession of certain social identities associated with commitment to their new home. The development of commitment, then, is viewed as a change in social identity--a change that is accompanied by changes in 'perspective' bearing on the social make-up of one's social universe. / Formal and conventional anthropological methods were employed in the collection and analysis of data. Formal ethnoscientific eliciting was carried out in interviews with a primary sample of six French-Canadian residents and two Cree Indian residents. Conventional interviewing and ethnography rounded out the final analysis and provided cross-checks by which the use of formal methods could be evaluated. Social terminologies were analyzed in order to discover foci and structuring principles central to informants' constructions of their social worlds. Qualitative analysis of self-attitudes, images of their town, migration experiences, and background factors provided insight into recurrent patterns in migration to this Northern town. A cross-tabulation of various factors permitted an exploration into the operation of migrational and assimilative processes associated with the development of commitment. / Both factors connected with the migrant's background and factors related to his reception in town must be taken into account to make sense of observed patterns of migration. Native townsmen not permitted to assimilate fully into the new community are unlikely to develop commitment because to do so would place them in a position of 'marginality'. French-Canadians who do not feel called upon to assimilate to a new order also do not develop commitment to the town. Other observed patterns may be explained by reference to the same cognitive and social-psychological processes, though the importance of symbolic anchors for identity in such processes must also be recognized. Observations and findings add to our knowledge of Cree Indian culture, French Canada, and Northern towns and also to our understanding of migration and related phenomena.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban 1991.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

Teachers are considered by most policymakers and school change experts to be the centerpiece of educational change. Therefore, it is not surprising that many current educational reform efforts in South Africa are directed at teachers and their involvement in educational reform is seen as critical. Reforms must address the core processes of teaching and learning if they are to markedly change what happens in schools. Yet teachers respond to educational reforms in a variety of ways: some teachers push or sustain reform efforts, whereas others resist or actively subvert them. The question of addressing curriculum change in our schools has recently become a matter of contention. Teachers are finding it difficult to adjust to the changing educational policies that seek to coerce teachers into addressing curriculum change in their classrooms. In response to the changes in educational policy in the new dispensation, the teaching of history, a subject that had already experienced numerous transformations in the past, was once again faced with the challenges of a renewed curriculum framework. This study aims to capture the complexities and contradictions that are associated with a transforming educational system. More specifically it interogates the question of how history teachers see themselves within this transformation process and the impact that it has on their identities to curriculum change. Identity formation theories were used as a lens to understand the various forces that influence the identities of teachers. A number of theories were examined in order to unfold identity development from various approaches to allow for a more holistic understanding of a teacher's life career. The main question that guided this investigation was how history teachers construct their identities within the context of curriculum change. In attempting to unpack the messiness of the curriculum transformation process and at the same time to capture how history teachers are negotiating their roles and identities in post -apartheid South Africa, this research study employed a qualitative method of data collection based on a life history research tradition. The richness of information that was obtained from lengthy, open-ended interviews with six history teachers from the Kwasanti circuit, provided a sound platform on which to respond to the critical questions of the study. The data was collated to develop narrative stories with the intention of understanding teacher thinking and experiences within a broad social and historical context. The wealth of information provided by the interviews enabled the researcher to examine how these teachers were constructing their identities within the context of curriculum change. An analysis of the findings indicated that the conceptions that history teachers have about the changing curriculum are influenced by their past experiences. The study revealed that some of the major forces of influence that shaped the teachers' understanding of the changing curriculum were pragmatic and educational. Teachers come with many realities into the profession often reconstructing and creating their context based on past experiences and perceptions. Evidence from the data reveals that the plethora of policy initiatives seeking educational transformation in South Africa are to a large degree not congruent with existing teachers' beliefs . Teachers have to redefine and renegotiate their roles and identities, which is problematic because they come embedded with experiences gleaned during the apartheid era. The study concludes with a synthesis of the findings and it makes recommendations for addressing the present needs of history teachers in South Africa. The reconceptualisation of education through new policy initiatives has to refocus and look more closely at teachers' understanding of their day-to-day realities in the work environment. Teachers need to 'own' the process of change, and reform efforts need to be grounded in an understanding of teachers' professional lives and development. Teachers must see themselves as experts in the dynamics of change. To become experts in the dynamics of change, teachers must become skilled change agents. / Theses (Ph.D.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2005.

My text formulates a theory of postmodern invisibility while examining the condition of cultural invisibility. As I track strategies of position and space in contemporary American literature and music, I propose a tactic for attaining cultural visibility that draws from Jean Baudrillard's notion of the-more-visible-than-the-visible, postmodern aesthetics and the cultural metaphor of the optics of the vision system.In our technoculture, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and his narrator's choice of an invisible identity, though wonderfully evocative, is no longer a viable solution to the dilemma of cultural invisibility. Later contemporary American fiction, especially Don DeLillo's White Noise, offers a strategy that oscillates between invisibility and visibility and is ineffective in curing cultural invisibility. My project centers on Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and her representation of a storytelling ceremony that can cure the problem of cultural invisibility. Silko proposes a narrative mode capable of representing and accomplishing cultural work by reversing the flow of culture. Nathaniel Mackey's jazz-inspired fiction, Dibot Baghostus's Run (1993), expands Silko's magical blueprint by employing a culturally dense, hyper-visible narrative mode.Like Silko and Mackey, cultural theorist Trinh Minh-ha, anthropologist Michael Taussig, and sociologist Stephen Pfohl employ the more-visible-than-the-visible composition strategy of collage. Their writings, as well as the aesthetic of hiphop, serve as a model for my text because in collage, there is room for disorientation, noise, local elements, plurality, recomposition, hyper-visibility, and the sampling of crosscultural artifacts and debris. Experiencing a montage can shock sensory perceptions into novel paradigms of representation and, as Silko and Mackey hope, bring about a meaningful cultural visibility.For Minh-ha, Silko, and Mackey, stories and other cultural artifacts circulate freely like gifts. The pleasure is in transmitting, circulating, and retransmitting the story: the pleasure of making the story more-than-visible. Then the story functions, as Minh-ha states, "as a cure and a protection [that] is at once musical, historical, poetical, ethical, educational, magical." While my text strives to represent several of these elements, my theory of postmodern invisibility reflects and transmits a narrative mode that is capable of curing the problem of cultural invisibility. / Department of English

My research investigates the habitual, the non-monumental, the mundane, the ordinary and the everyday. I conceive of this as those moments in life that are not socially or culturally recognised as important. Traditionally, such moments have not been considered worthy of documentation and have been omitted or overlooked by mainstream media. This exegesis examines the importance of the everyday and considers how to make it conspicuous. Historically, these moments have been identified with the feminine, in that much theoretical and artistic work has emerged exploring women's experience of the everyday and testifying to its importance. Three spheres in particular have attracted critical interest: namely the body, the domestic and personal identity. For example, in 1966 Yoko Ono's 'No 4 (Bottoms)' brought the issue of the body and its banality onto centre stage by showing an endless parade of bottoms. In 1975, Chantal Akerman's film 'Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles', showed the everyday routines of a self-contained housewife. More recently, numerous artists have explored the politics of identity. Sadie Benning has made numerous videos that show the mundane and also reveal her personal identity, by exploring large and especially small scale details. / While conventionally newsreels and big budget documentaries have focused on 'big' events, one of the arenas that have investigated the everyday is experimental film and video. My exegesis gives a brief historical overview of this genre. Testimony in this media is often used as a voice to express the everyday. My journal entries (testimonies) deal with everyday experiences, and are interspersed throughout my exegesis. They are also the main threads in my videos. In my studio work, I use movement and dance to express in an abstract manner issues about the everyday, which include personal identity, more specifically issues of illness and sexuality / My research draws on a variety of sources including: 1970's feminist artists and filmmakers (Chantal Akerman and Martha Rosler). Many artists who were involved in the women's movement used their bodies in various art forms including performance art to make radical statements about domesticity and feminism. Contemporary artists' depiction of personal identity that mostly informed my work (in particular, queer identity) are: experimental queer film and media makers Sadie Benning, Marlon Riggs, Isaac Julien and William Yang. / Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2006.