This thesis examines shojo manga (Japanese comics for girls) as a site of the subversion of gender. The focus will be on stories about cross-dressing, as the crossdressed heroine poses from the outset questions about the nature of girls within shojo manga and the girls who are supposedly reading the texts. The analysis takes place at two levels: visual language and narrative. Over the course of five chapters, focusing on a couple of series in each, this thesis will show the various ways categories of gender and sex are undermined in five different subgenres. Yet gender norms are recuperated in the end. The manga always return to the figure of the shojo , the ambiguously gendered "not-quite-female" female that must expire at adulthood and the regulatory function heterosexuality plays in this inevitable demise. Nevertheless shojo manga readers need not necessarily share this end. The various ways that the reader is positioned both visually and narratively suggests that her gender and sexuality remains ambiguous and indefinable.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of English, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-48).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2007. / Description based on contents viewed Oct. 5, 2007; title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-102).

M.Tech. (Fine Art) / In this research, I map emergent female Afrikaner identities in relation to Willem Boshoff‟s artwork Bread and Pebble Roadmap, which acts as the central focus to this study and informs my own body of practical work. In order to constitute a key to unlock questions regarding emergent female Afrikaner identities in a South African context from colonial to post-apartheid, the relationship between image and text in Bread and Pebble Roadmap is investigated. The investigation of this relationship is interwoven with a discourse of an early form of the literary tradition that has come to be known as Arabic-Afrikaans script, a term used to describe the "literary work which is written in Afrikaans with Arabic letters" (Van Selms 1951). This study adopts a qualitative methodological approach. The research incorporates textual analysis and visual analysis. The study presents a visual semiotic analysis of Bread and Pebble Roadmap, in order to map possible links between this artwork and a literature review of an early form of Arabic-Afrikaans script, as a contextual framework in which to situate the study. Arabic- Afrikaans, in turn, acts as a link which forges a relationship between two kinds of identities: an Islamic influence on South African culture, and an Islamic influence on my life experience as an Afrikaans-speaking woman who lived in Egypt for four years. These two identities, represented by artist Lalla Essaydi in relation to an Islamic identity and artist Lizelle Kruger in relation to an Afrikaner identity, are investigated through a comparative visual analysis. The study intends to show how Essaydi and Kruger form a link with Boshoff, where each of these three artists subverts, questions, and breaks down prevailing cultural and linguistic stereotypes, and in so doing operationalises the notion of an emergent identity. Identity construction, in the context of this study, is characterised by Stuart Hall‟s (in Rutherford 1990:222) concept of identity being in a continual state of flux, identity as “a production, which is never complete; always in process and always constructed within, not outside representation”. I therefore map my Afrikaner identity, previously seen as fixed, unproblematic and in line with the national discourse under apartheid (Van Heerden 2006), but now seen as „becoming‟ and „transitioning‟, situated „betwixt and between‟ (Turner 1969). This notion informs my own practical work, which becomes visual metaphors of maps, in order to navigate a sense of self. My practical work therefore attempts to embody a temporary space of an emergent identity. I understand this in-between space (Bhabha 2004) as a liminal space, as a continuum of spaces in which my emergent female Afrikaner identity resides. An important conclusion that I make from my research is that Boshoff‟s conflation of image and text, which is consistent with Derrida‟s (1981) deconstructive strategy, unhinges the conditions of the stereotype, which conventionally privileges a dichotomy in which different polar relations reside. Drawing a connection between Bread and Pebble Roadmap and Arabic-Afrikaans, and applying the conditions found in Bread and Pebble Roadmap to Arabic-Afrikaans, I view Arabic- Afrikaans as able to unhinge its own seeming dichotomies: between Arabic and Afrikaans, and thus between Islam and Christianity. In this way, I am able to argue that Arabic-Afrikaans is able to reverse stereotyping and point a way forward towards the construction of emergent non-racial stereotyping.

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In this dissertation the tracing of a personal shift in consciousness is evidenced in my art production and through self-interrogation. Investigations into feminist theology proved resonant with a personal apostasy and provided a base for a feminine identity and language. The schism perpetrated by this pivotal thesis in the revisioning of women, its subsequent antithesis, motivated a search for synthesis. A scientific enlightenment in the field of quantum physics promotes the notion of a unified consciousness. Psychology investigates the realities of mysticism and exposes commonalities within eastern and western religions revealing a thread of unified metaphysical thought. The twentieth century has witnessed a radical in the art expression of the spiritual, some coincident with the revival of an interest in oriental art, and some as a manifestation of zeitgeist or collective consciousness. This past century of rapid technological change, clearly has its attendant spiritual shifting patterns. The process of creativity in art-making has proved to be a conduit for an evolving consciousness. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-226).

South African photographer Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko and South African painter Tracy Payne explore different ways of communicating African realities. The visual imagery of these two artists focuses a lot on movement, challenging the rigidity of boundaries set by Western social constructs. In their work, Veleko and Payne critique the limitations of terms such as “authenticity.” It is extremely difficult to portray shifting notions of contemporary African identity in light of the stain of colonial philosophies which have, in times past, exoticised and appropriated the African body and ascribed conventions of “authenticity” to African representations. Undermining the burden of Western boundaries1, Veleko and Payne redefine what it means to operate in Africa today. Veleko seeks additional cultural realities to complicate her identity as a woman living in Africa while Payne uses concepts of movement to question the validity of structures which advocate an either/ or binary such as “East” and “West” and “masculinity” and “femininity”. By subtly merging aspects of these binaries in their representations, Veleko and Payne bring transnational possibilities to light by undermining the restrictions inscribed in the social and political history of (South) Africa with regard to collective and individual identities. Constructs of gender have contributed to a heightened sense of “African” “masculinity,” forming a stereotype of the African body which is difficult to break free from. Considering the notion of transnationalism and the issue of moving beyond boundaries, borrowing aspects of different cultures in attempt to better define a sense of self, Veleko and Payne engage in the sampling of different lifestyles and perspectives to better define their individualities. This thesis seeks to provide an analysis of the visual language used by Veleko and Payne to promote fluid “African” identities.

Thesis (MA (VA)(Visual Arts))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / This thesis considers radical and reactionary political strategies for questioning systems of gender/sexuality categorisation and finds both wanting in terms of the cultural insularity and mainstream assimilation each respectively engenders. An alternative is posited in the form of radical assimilation, a theory borrowing the best elements from both approaches. The remainder of the study is focussed on the search for personal and iconographic strategies to pursue a politic of radical assimilation in my creative production. These strategies are finally exemplified and manifested via discussions of the practical corpus of artworks that aided in the formation of this politic. The discursive framework in which this theorization occurs includes considerations of queer theory and photography (especially domestic photography and portraiture) and subjective contextualization (invoking the domestic uses of images), and all should be seen as constituting a personal discursive framework: an attempt to counter the reductive scope an uncontextualised analysis of my work allows. This study is accordingly an explication of the processes that turn the personal into the political; a critical affirmation of difference; and an attempt to narrow the distances between us.