The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of the intersection of race, gender and social class on women leaders’ work experience and career progression in order to come up with strategies for gender transformation at leadership level in corporate South Africa. The problem statement of this research study concerns the indication in the annual report of the Commission for Employment Equity (Department of Labour 2012) that there is under-representation of women, especially African and Coloured women, at top management level relative to the economically active population. The Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill was published in the Government Gazette No. 37005 of 6 November 2013. This Bill aims to enforce compliance with the stipulated minimum representation of women at senior levels in both the private and public sectors. This study, with its objective of reaching an understanding of the impact of the intersection of race, gender and social class on women’s career progression, is therefore timeous. Getting the perspective of woman CEOs across race and class on how to transform gender at leadership level could add an important voice to transformation and could be of benefit to decision makers in business and in government. Based on this problem statement the following research questions were formulated: - To what extent does the intersection of race, social class and gender impact on women CEOs’ experience in their work roles and career progression? - How might an understanding of women leaders’ experiences in their roles assist with strategies to transform gender at leadership level in corporate South Africa? Qualitative research methodology was chosen as the appropriate methodology and grounded theory was employed. Purposive, snowball and theoretical sampling methods were used to identify fourteen participants (13 CEOs and one chairman).The life story method was employed for in-depth semi-structured interviews from which rich descriptive data was collected and which was analysed using grounded theory. Findings confirmed that the intersection of race, gender, age and class does have an impact on women’s career progression and their life experiences. The dominant social identity was race for blacks and gender whites; class and age were the overlay. In terms of strategies for gender transformation, first-order constructs from the participants were related to abstract second-order constructs from the literature, which led to the formulation of the WHEEL Theoretical Model. The theoretical model is an integration of different elements required for the formulation of strategies for gender transformation at leadership level. The different elements were women themselves; domestic and family support; the organisation; society and government. Despite some limitations that were encountered, the aim of the study was achieved by making a contribution not only to the development of theory related to strategies for gender transformation at leadership level, which other scholars can build from, but also to the gaining of insights into the intersection of multiple social identities and their impact which can be used by business leaders and policymakers to address inequalities in organisations. In addition, this research study made various recommendations for future research / Business Management

This thesis is an assessment of interreligious dialogue in India developed as an approach to other religions in the context of exclusivist attitudes. While dialogue is important in such a context, nevertheless, in terms of its wider objectives of creating better relationships in society, it has some limitations which need to be addressed for it to be more effective in society. Studying the past 60 years of dialogue in India and undertaking field-research in south India, this thesis discusses three such limitations. Firstly, critiquing the notion of world-religion categories which is fundamental to dialogue, it argues that such categories are products of the western Enlightenment and colonialism leading to framing colonised people’s identities largely in terms of religion. Dialogue, emphasising the plurality of religions, has appropriated these notions although people live with multiple identities. Secondly the idea of religious conflicts serves as the basic context for dialogue in which dialogue should take necessary actions to contain them. While the concern to do away with conflicts through dialogue needs to be furthered, this thesis considers the multiple factors involved in such conflicts and works for solutions accordingly. Analysing through a case study a clash in 1982 in Kanyakumari district which continues to be termed as Hindu-Christian conflict, this thesis shows that there are multiple factors associated with each communal conflict, and dialogue needs to understand them if it is to work effectively. Thirdly it critiques the elite nature and methods in dialogue which ignore grass root realities and call for ‘taking dialogue to grassroots.’ The argument is that grassroot experiences of relating with each other in everyday living should be incorporated in dialogue for better results. What is proposed at the end is a necessity of re-visioning dialogue which can lead to fostering ‘inter-community relations based on multiple identities and everyday living experiences of ordinary people’ that invites one to enlarge the horizons to comprehend the plurality of relations and identities, not just plurality of religions, understand and address real-life conflicts and question naming conflicts as religious, and incorporate grassroot experiences of everyday living in continuing to work for a more peaceful society.

Education for First Nations must be understood within the historical context which saw their cultural, linguistic, and traditional knowledge undermined and devalued (Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015). The conditions that exist for First Nations today are a result of First Nations people having been disadvantaged in a multitude of ways by colonization and nowhere more so than in the First Nations education system, because the structure of formal schooling has as its foundation colonial institutions (Battiste, 2013). It is for these reasons that I use a postcolonial theoretical framework to guide this study. As the education leaders in First Nations communities, I examine the nature of the work of First Nations Directors of Education working or who worked recently in First Nations band-operated on-reserve school systems in Manitoba, Canada. This qualitative research study explores selected aspects of their experiences, perspectives, preparation, and training. Through the eyes, voices, and stories of the participants, this study seeks to understand the milieu that is First Nations on-reserve education. The results of the study identify what can be done to bring about transformational change for First Nations students. The study found that the role of the First Nations Director of Education is multi-faceted and complex. The roles and responsibilities that the participants identified were categorized using Cuban’s (1988) typology of core roles: managerial, political, and instructional. Their work is influenced by many factors including underfunding, lack of resources, high teacher turnover, and the on-going impacts of the residential schools and colonialism. The study identifies the need for specific training and provides recommendations for practice and future research. / October 2016

The thesis explores the political dispositions lurking within the practices of vision, construed here in terms of the visible and invisible. It locates this investigation firstly, in the representational culture of colonial Singapore and secondly, in postcolonial Singaporean performances. Although the thesis takes as its point of departure conceptualizations of the practices of vision by Bhabha, Foucault, Lefebvre and Lacan, as the argument proceeds, the exploration takes its cue increasingly from the thought of Derrida. The chapters explore how the relationship to Otherness is variously effaced or enacted in practices of the visible and invisible. The thesis starts with an exploration of the practices of the visible in colonial power relations and postcolonial multiculturalism, construed here as a metaphysical sovereign political disposition, the predicates of which are the theological-political securing of the I Am Who I AM. Within this relationship to Otherness is a violent ethico-political relation to Otherness. However, in the thought of Derrida and Levinas, the relationship between 'us' and the 'Other' is the condition of possibility for both the Self and Other, for justice, responsibility, associated by an openness to the Other, including the willingness to be unsettled by the surprise of the Other-to-come. The second half of the thesis investigates the possibilities of a radical relation to the radically non-relational. Firstly, this radical relation to radical alterity is construed as encompassing a practice of the invisible, that of a poetics of the (im)possible. Secondly, this radical relation to Otherness is conceptualized as a 'writing in blindness', the counterpart of which is eschatological desire, accompanied by the 'art of the perhaps'.

The Indian labor diaspora that settled in Malaya, now known as Malaysia, was a diaspora that was used to further colonial ambitions. Large scale agricultural projects required a workforce that Malaya did not have. South Indian peasants from the untouchable Madrasi caste were taken to Malaya, initially, as indentured servants. When indenture was abolished, they were engaged as contract workers. Inferiority and backwardness were common colonial perceptions that were held against them. These laborers were exploited by the British as they had no bargaining power or the ability to demand more than a meager wage. World War II redefined the way these laborers started to view the British. Having suffered defeat in the hands of the Japanese, the colonial power retreated meekly. This was a significant development as it removed the veil of British dominance in the eyes of a formerly docile people. When the British returned to Malaya after the war, it was a more defiant Indian labor community who greeted them. These wanted more concessions. They wanted citizenship, better wages and living conditions. They wanted a future that did not retain them on the rubber estates but one where they could finally shed their subaltern roots and achieve upward mobility. This new defiance was met with antagonism by the colonial power whose main concern was to get the lucrative but stalled rubber industry up and running again. The destitution and impoverishment suffered by the Indians during the war was ignored as they were rounded up like cattle to be put to work again on the estates. When their demands were not met, Indian laborers joined forces with the heavily Communist influenced Chinese migrant community to go on strikes, the strongest weapon they had at their disposal. The creation of the All Malayan Rubber Workers' Council, a predominantly Indian trade union, is essential in showing how Indian labor became a threat to the British that they eventually had to retaliate with draconian military suppression through the imposition of the Emergency in 1948. Archival material from the Malaysian National Archives, The National Archives of the United Kingdom, the Labor History and Archive Study Center at the People's History Museum in the United Kingdom, and the Hull History Center in the United Kingdom, were analyzed to present an alternate narrative as opposed to the colonial narrative, in recognizing and attributing a modern spirit and agency amongst this formerly docile labor diaspora. This work presents the events of 1945-1948 as a time when Indians rejected the colonial perception of them as an inferior people, and challenged the colonial power. However, their efforts were subverted by the British and by doing so, the British ensured the maintenance of a labor diaspora that would continue to be exploited by those who ruled over them.

In Anglophone postcolonial fiction of the twentieth century, myth is used as a framing device that contains and interrogates historical event, thereby functioning as a form of alternative history. Despite the prevalence of cross-cultural symbolic systems and radically hybrid forms of narration, the dominant method of reading myth in postcolonial literary criticism remains dependent on conceptual models that construct myth as originary racial narrative. This particular approach fosters readings of contemporary secular myths of “nation”, “land” or “identity” within culturally monolithic frames. I scrutinize the intersections between early structuralist approaches to myth, and later post-structuralist deconstruction of myth and suggest a postcolonial reading of myth as the ideological coded middle space between sacred and secular narrative. Focusing on four novels from Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Caribbean, I demonstrate the continued influence and adaptability of myth to narrate vastly different historical and socio-cultural contexts. Taking into account several major shifts in the conceptualization of twentieth-century myth criticism , I develop a critical vocabulary for comparative readings of myth which interrogates existing discourses on the categories of “archetype”, “ideology” and “symbol”. My approach is comparativist, and foregrounds the importance of locating myth within literary and socio-cultural context. The introduction to this study defines the field of myth criticism in relation to postcolonial fiction. I provide outlines of the theoretical positions drawn from Carl Gustav Jung, Roland Barthes, Northrop Frye and Bruce Lincoln and demonstrate the relevance of each in relation to reading myth in the four novels under survey. The first chapter looks at the way Alfred Yuson exposes mythic constructions of Filipino identity in The Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café (1987). The second chapter provides a comparative study of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992) and Allan Sealy's The Everest Hotel A Calender (1998). This chapter analyzes Ondaatje and Sealy's employment of the Fisher King myth as a device for narrating radically different visions of postcolonial community. The third chapter analyzes the function of archetype as a vehicle for ideology in Wilson Harris's Jonestown (1996). The conclusion of this study suggests the way this method of analysis can provoke further critical inquiry in the field of postcolonial myth criticism.

In Anglophone postcolonial fiction of the twentieth century, myth is used as a framing device that contains and interrogates historical event, thereby functioning as a form of alternative history. Despite the prevalence of cross-cultural symbolic systems and radically hybrid forms of narration, the dominant method of reading myth in postcolonial literary criticism remains dependent on conceptual models that construct myth as originary racial narrative. This particular approach fosters readings of contemporary secular myths of “nation”, “land” or “identity” within culturally monolithic frames. I scrutinize the intersections between early structuralist approaches to myth, and later post-structuralist deconstruction of myth and suggest a postcolonial reading of myth as the ideological coded middle space between sacred and secular narrative. Focusing on four novels from Southeast Asia, South Asia and the Caribbean, I demonstrate the continued influence and adaptability of myth to narrate vastly different historical and socio-cultural contexts. Taking into account several major shifts in the conceptualization of twentieth-century myth criticism , I develop a critical vocabulary for comparative readings of myth which interrogates existing discourses on the categories of “archetype”, “ideology” and “symbol”. My approach is comparativist, and foregrounds the importance of locating myth within literary and socio-cultural context. The introduction to this study defines the field of myth criticism in relation to postcolonial fiction. I provide outlines of the theoretical positions drawn from Carl Gustav Jung, Roland Barthes, Northrop Frye and Bruce Lincoln and demonstrate the relevance of each in relation to reading myth in the four novels under survey. The first chapter looks at the way Alfred Yuson exposes mythic constructions of Filipino identity in The Great Philippine Jungle Energy Café (1987). The second chapter provides a comparative study of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (1992) and Allan Sealy's The Everest Hotel A Calender (1998). This chapter analyzes Ondaatje and Sealy's employment of the Fisher King myth as a device for narrating radically different visions of postcolonial community. The third chapter analyzes the function of archetype as a vehicle for ideology in Wilson Harris's Jonestown (1996). The conclusion of this study suggests the way this method of analysis can provoke further critical inquiry in the field of postcolonial myth criticism.

Hideous Progeny: Postcolonial Fiction and the Gothic Tradition explores the vexed relationship between postcolonial fiction and the Anglo-European-American Gothic mode. Gothic motifs figure abundantly in postcolonial works, but they are not always meant to be taken seriously; often they take a comic and ironic stance toward the subject matter. When horror does appear in these works, it is usually not situated in the abject Other (the pharmakos figure), but in the projecting mindset of the dominant culture. As the title Hideous Progeny implies, such postcolonial novels are the rebellious offspring of the Gothic canon; they can even be dubbed Frankenstein's monsters, created from the disjecta membra of the nineteenth-century Gothic tradition and reassembled into a newly vital, global Gothic literature. Or, to use a different metaphor, they function as inverted mirror images, as photographic negatives, of the nineteenth-century Gothic novel, neutralizing its familiar tropes with an injection of "magical realist" motifs from diverse cultural traditions. This study uses a psychoanalytic methodology to analyze the Gothic source echoes in selected novels by Toni Morrison, Gabriel García Márquez, and Salman Rushdie. Through the lens of post-Freudian theorists Nicolas Abraham, Maria Torok, and Julia Kristeva, in particular, these novels will be depicted as Gothic--suspended between a haunted past and a technologically disorienting present--and also anti-Gothic. If the Gothic novel explored the unconscious anxieties of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western culture, as many have suggested, the postcolonial Gothic novel explores the unconscious anxieties of an emerging global culture in the late twentieth century. Unlike its Anglo-American precursor, however, postcolonial Gothic fiction does not recoil from the unknown, but embraces the "liminal" zone, finding in it both "tiger and lady," both terror and potential renewal.

In the field of literary production, women's autobiographical writing has been one of the most powerful means of artistic expression. Life-writing is a genre of ambiguity and paradox intertwined with some of the most fundamental questions of literary studies. Within the domain of lettres françaises, new canons of female-authored literary works from France and the various regions of the non-Western French-speaking world have emerged during both the colonial and postcolonial periods. This body of published autobiographical texts has worked to re-define the very nature of twentieth and twenty-first century literary canons. In addition to the traditional autobiographical novel, other literary genres such as travel journals, diaries, poetry, confessions, memoirs, and autobiographical fiction provide authors with a wide array of literary alternatives to the classical autobiography. Focused on the autobiographical texts and films of five French-speaking women of the twentieth century, this study examines both canonical and marginal female authors from France, Northern Africa, and the Caribbean. In addition to dealing with issues such as personal freedom, language, social class, the desire to write, family, alterity, and space, this project seeks to analyze how five French-speaking women autobiographers of different generations and social and national origins established a literature of their own through a métissage of autobiographical forms. Since autobiography is a mode that historically has been defined by mostly white, Christian, European men of the upper social echelon, I propose to show the different ways in which the women of this study have in fact been “shooting the autobiographical canon” by taking over, taking aim at, or altering the established domain of male-authored life-narratives as in the case of Simone de Beauvoir, Elisabeth Lacoin and Maryse Condé, or in filming a new canon of autobiographical expression in the case of Assia Djebar’s and Yamina Benguigui’s documentaries.

This thesis seeks to explore the intention of postcolonial Australian Aboriginal and Indigenous South African postcolonial writers in reconstructing cultural and historical myths. The predominant concerns of this thesis are the issues of Representation and Historiography as they are constructed in the four primary texts namely Dr Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World, The Heart of Redness, The Kadaitcha Sung and Woza Albert! It begins with a summary journey into the concepts of the postcolonial, presenting some of the challenges with which the concept has been confronted finding nonetheless it enabling as an ‘anticipatory discourse’ in appreciating the literatures from once-colonised nations such as Australia and South Africa. I then take a cursory look at the concept of myth while focussing on how writers like Sam Watson and Barney, Mtwa and Mbogeni put such cultural myths as the Biamee deity in The Kadaitcha Sung and the second coming of Jesus in Woza Albert! to use. In the next section, I focus on how the writers Mudrooroo (then Colin Johnson) in Australia and Mda from South Africa confront and reconstruct some of the historical myths upon which European colonialism was founded, using the texts, Dr Wooreddy’s Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World and The Heart of Redness. The achievement of this thesis has simply been one of the canonical expansions recommended of postcolonial criticism; the stressing an appreciation of the differences that exist even when postcolonial writers seek to achieve the same goal with their literatures.