The category of young adult (YA) fiction encompasses a wide range of genres; but despite this generic diversity, it has so far failed to represent the full range of communities that make up contemporary British society. Discussions are ongoing between professionals in the publishing industry and campaigning individuals and organisations who are aiming to redress this imbalance. Writers making new work are in a position to help effect a change, but acknowledging and responding to the call for inclusion can be far from straightforward, with questions being raised such as: ‘how far can a writer stray from their own lived experience?’ and ‘how can a writer avoid tokenism or cultural appropriation when writing for inclusion?’ This thesis consists of a new YA contemporary novel, Sea Change, and an accompanying critical essay, which reflects on the challenges I encountered while aiming to write for inclusion. Set in the Scottish Highlands, Sea Change is a contemporary YA crime novel, in which the world of the sixteen-year-old protagonist, Alex, is thrown into turmoil when he discovers a dead body next to his fishing boat. The decisions Alex makes following this discovery set in motion the plot of the story. The narrative, as it unfolds, facilitates the exploration of themes frequently associated with adolescence, such as friendship, risk-taking and the maturation into an adult identity, along with themes specifically linked to Alex’s status as a member of marginalised communities because of his sexuality and social class, such as prejudice, acute stress brought on by economic pressure, and low self-esteem. This thesis, then, reviews the opinions and recommendations being expressed by campaigners for greater diversity, and exposes the uncertainties and challenges a writer faces when aiming to write for inclusion.

This dissertation is a cultural history of how race and gender influenced nineteenth-century citizenship. The gender ideology of true womanhood is generally described as a practice of white middle-class women; however it was also used to define racial difference and to attach a civic purpose to the everyday practices of women. The antebellum prominence of true womanhood relied upon a female focused print culture and created a shared identity among white middle-class women and those who sought to emulate them. This dissertation provides a new interpretation of the cultural importance of true womanhood. First, it argues that women understood their everyday life to hold a civic purpose. Second, while activists tried to overturn legal curtailments to equality, non-activist women saw their civic status as different -- although not inferior to -- that of men. They made forays into the public sphere through print culture and actively redefined the private sphere by linking their domestic work to nation building. Finally, evolving interpretations of womanhood were not simply a reflection of the changing labor of middle-class women in the emerging market economy, but also linked femininity with class and race. Middle-class white women sought to differentiate themselves from immigrants and women of color by enhancing the significance of the home and by distinguishing between household labor and household management. Middle-class African American women also pursued true womanhood to enhance their own status and to argue that their well-ordered homes proved that African American men were patriarchs in their own rights and worthy of citizenship and the vote. This dissertation rewrites our understanding of women's influence over definitions of citizens and citizenship in the nineteenth century. To do so, I interpret the intersections of black and white constructions of "true womanhood" by applying a cultural (citizenship as lived experience) instead of a political interpretation of citizenship. Doing so re-conceptualizes domesticity as a political force in the nineteenth century and explores how home, race and gender transected to create individual identities of Americans as Americans. An overarching goal of this project is to chart the evolution of citizenship in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as it followed the dual tracts of judicial and legislative construction in juxtaposition with cultural understandings of what makes a citizen.

Two case studies examine and elaborate the idea of how the Chinese print media in New Zealand present Chinese cultural identity. The thesis examines the free Chinese newspapers given away in shops, supermarkets and other location where Chinese people gather. Do Chinese people use the media to maintain their cultural identity or to adapt to a new environment? The Chinese community in New Zealand is varied due to the diversity of its origins and the different stages at which its members have arrived. The Chinese in New Zealand show many differences in countries or regions of birth, languages, dialects, religions, values, behaviour and cultural identities. Little work has been done on Chinese print media in New Zealand. Many New Zealanders regard the Chinese community as homogenous. They do not know how many different kinds of Chinese newspapers there are in New Zealand and why Chinese migrants have so many of them. Chinese migrants in New Zealand group themselves after their arrival according to their origin, values, religions, dialects, and behaviours. Such varied groups of Chinese need their own papers to express their ideas, attitudes, values and argument. This study is intended to show how these varied newspapers reflect ideas about cultural identity in diasporic setting. Another important factor is how the Chinese print media react to an issue or social events and how readers respond. Chinese readers pick up the newspapers to read and discuss various controversial stories. People argue about important questions such as “who we are” “what we are doing here” and “what is our identity”. By studying these newspapers, we can gain insights into how the Chinese cultural identity is transformed by the experience of immigration.

This project examines the important implications of printed vernacular appeals to a nascent public by exiled reformers such as William Tyndale, by religious conservatives such as Thomas More, and by Henry VIII and his regime in the volatile years of the 1520s and 1530s. This dissertation explores the nature of this public, both materially and as a discursive concept, and the various ways in which Tyndale provoked and justified public discussion of the central religious issues of the period through the production of vernacular Bibles and his polemical works. Tyndale’s writings raised important issues of authority and legitimacy and challenged many of the traditional notions of hierarchy at the heart of early modern English society. This study analyzes how this challenge manifested itself in Tyndale’s ecclesiology and in his political reflections and in the complex relationship between these two elements of his thought.

From the late fifteenth century onward the new world has been described, imagined, and created via the written word and the printing press. Europeans and Euro-North Americans laid claim to the new world through print culture, both politically (through written treaties and legislation) and culturally (through popular fiction and non-fiction), creating and defining popular and widespread notions of land ownership and cultural otherness. This thesis examines, from an historical-cultural point-of-view, the efforts of five early twentieth century Aboriginal writers in Canada, Charles A. Cooke, Edward Ahenakew, Bernice Loft Winslow, Andrew Paull, and Ethel Brant Monture. These individuals were writing in the period after 1915 (the death of E. Pauline Johnson) and before 1960 (roughly when the modern cultural renaissance of Aboriginal peoples in Canada began), and each used print and literary endeavour as a means of writing-back to the widespread stereotypes about Aboriginal peoples and land ownership which permeated non-Aboriginal writing about Indians in this era. The period between 1915 and 1960 has been described by previous scholars as having been void of Aboriginal literary production, but this thesis shows that some Aboriginal peoples used print and publishing, for perhaps the first time, to communicate with other Aboriginal peoples provincially, nationally, and in some cases, internationally. Writing and print were used as a kind of call-to-arms in the early twentieth century by the Aboriginal writers discussed in this work, and their efforts demonstrate that there has been a continuum of Aboriginal writing in Canada from the early nineteenth century through to contemporary times. Through the adoption and careful articulation of western print culture, Aboriginal peoples have made efforts at laying claim and asserting control over the cultural and political literary (mis)representations of Indians in Canada.

This thesis work has introduced process orientation at the printing company Color Print Sweden AB. The outcome ofthis work is a survey of the work flow at the prepress department. To visualise the production process at the companya comprehensive mapping of the main process, order-to-delivery, has been made. The work has detected a couple ofcritical elements in the existing process. These elements are the following: initial check of material delivered to the prepressdepartment as well as the control made of the plotter print-out, digital test print and plate. To guarantee the qualityof the prints it is very important that the work made in the prepress department is optimized. This survey can thereforebe used as a basis for continuous improvement in the processes at Color Print Sweden AB. This work has alsoresulted in a template that Color Print Sweden AB can use to design routine descriptions to ensure that specific worktasks are performed the right way by everyone and all the time.

This report contains a study of ink mileage, show through and other mechanisms that are important inthe study of substrate printability. These mechanisms have an impact on how ink will react on paper.To develop a substrate that provides good ink mileage and less show through requires a closer studyof substrate characteristics.Substrates with different characteristics have been tested by a technique developed for this projectcalled modified ink mileage. Ink mileage is a method to determine how much ink that is required for acertain target density. Further tests on the same substrates have been done including print throughand surface roughness measurements.

From the late fifteenth century onward the new world has been described, imagined, and created via the written word and the printing press. Europeans and Euro-North Americans laid claim to the new world through print culture, both politically (through written treaties and legislation) and culturally (through popular fiction and non-fiction), creating and defining popular and widespread notions of land ownership and cultural otherness. This thesis examines, from an historical-cultural point-of-view, the efforts of five early twentieth century Aboriginal writers in Canada, Charles A. Cooke, Edward Ahenakew, Bernice Loft Winslow, Andrew Paull, and Ethel Brant Monture. These individuals were writing in the period after 1915 (the death of E. Pauline Johnson) and before 1960 (roughly when the modern cultural renaissance of Aboriginal peoples in Canada began), and each used print and literary endeavour as a means of writing-back to the widespread stereotypes about Aboriginal peoples and land ownership which permeated non-Aboriginal writing about Indians in this era. The period between 1915 and 1960 has been described by previous scholars as having been void of Aboriginal literary production, but this thesis shows that some Aboriginal peoples used print and publishing, for perhaps the first time, to communicate with other Aboriginal peoples provincially, nationally, and in some cases, internationally. Writing and print were used as a kind of call-to-arms in the early twentieth century by the Aboriginal writers discussed in this work, and their efforts demonstrate that there has been a continuum of Aboriginal writing in Canada from the early nineteenth century through to contemporary times. Through the adoption and careful articulation of western print culture, Aboriginal peoples have made efforts at laying claim and asserting control over the cultural and political literary (mis)representations of Indians in Canada.

Repeated Stories is an exploratory project in textile design where the aim is to explore the design of storytelling patterns addressed to children. More precisely, the work examines how patterns can be designed as a tool to encourage curiosity and creativity among children. The work is practice-based, building on concrete experiments with a workshop character, where combinations of textile material, colour, printing techniques and scale are explored. The primary motive for this work is to take advantage of textile design expertise in a social context, to find new areas for competence in making repeats and patterns, and how a social value can be added to patterns. The result is an installation of three hanging textiles, meant for a public space, such as waiting room in a hospital. The work proposes an alternative approach to surface patterns by adding storytelling and give the patterns both a communicative and decorative function.

Although scholarly interest in the field of emblematics has increased greatly over the last decade, there is still much to be done, particularly in the area of religious emblems. The emblem form has been considered from the perspective of individual author, geographical factors and theological background but there have been few comparative studies with respect to religious emblems. This study will compare Protestant and Catholic emblems produced during the Reformation and Counter- Reformation, drawing on specific examples from, in particular, France, but also Germany and England. Emblems played a huge role in early-modern life. They expressed contemporary thought and also became part of the physical environment, being etched into stone, or wood, or sewn into cloth as decoration. In a period of such political, civil, and religious unrest, it would, therefore, seem likely that the Catholic and Protestant emblem would be quite distinct types either expressing theologically opposed notions, or manipulating the text/image relationship in quite different ways. Understanding how these emblems functioned, therefore, necessitates close reading, indeed, reading in the way the emblems were intended to be read. This study, therefore, will address the question of differences through detailed analysis of specific examples. This study begins with an introduction which gives a brief history of emblem literature and a review of relevant secondary material. Key terms and definitions regarding emblems are also explained here. This chapter also introduces the authors of the emblems analysed in later chapters. The first part of this thesis examines the emblem form in the wider context of the Reformation. From an initial overview of some of the key issues of the Reformation in chapter one, chapters two and three move on to analyse closely a wide corpus of Catholic and Protestant emblems. In these chapters the emblem is broken down into its component parts of verse and picture. Chapter two examines the religious emblem from the perspective of motif while chapter three approaches the emblem from a thematic angle. The second part of this study adopts a different approach presenting case studies of three authors. Chapter four explores the importance of the visual element in the emblems of Protestant author Rollenhagen. Chapter five investigates the Jesuit influences which shape the emblems of Catholic Berthod. While chapters four and five offer an insight into the work of prototypical Protestant and Catholic authors chapter six demonstrates the successful fusion of both Protestant and Catholic influences in the emblems of Wither. Indeed, this study suggests that the differences between Protestant and Catholic at this time are largely exaggerated with respect to emblems. Protestant and Catholic emblems are not, this study maintains, in essence all that different. It argues that, in fact, Protestant and Catholic emblems were often very close in terms of content and that the real difference is in the way they manipulate the text/image relationship.