Through the use of contextual data, this research study aims to explicate a theory about the experiences of academic women, who are also mothers, employed at a South African University. The research is interpretive in nature as it explores the women's accounts of the conflicts they face in striving to satisfy the demands of both their scholarly work and family responsibilities within multiple intersecting factors related to their personal/familial circumstances, and the strategic processes they engage in to manage the balance between these competing roles. The study followed a constructivist grounded theory design in an attempt to test the hypothesis (emerging from a prior pilot study) that the most significant enabling factors at work in the lives of these women comprise various relational support processes. The findings indicate that balancing academic work and mothering is a delicate activity that is sensitive to a number of facilitating as well as hindering factors. The participants revealed that they experience work-family role-conflict as a result of competing desires to dedicate themselves fully to both of these roles. The relational factors most prominently cited as being critical to enabling a work-family balance include the presence of a supportive partner, a support structure in the home in the form of an employed domestic helper, and the support derived from a 'shared experience' with other working mothers. Non-relational factors emanating from the unique quality of life afforded to mothers by employment within the particular case institution also emerged as being significantly enabling of a work-family balance for this group of academic mothers.

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This dissertation is a historical biography of F.V. Engelenburg (1863-1938) and covers the period from 1889 to 1938, when Engelenburg lived and worked in South Africa. The study situates Engelenburg in the historical landscape of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The focus is mainly on Engelenburg’s journalistic career at De Volksstem, but attention is also given to his many other interests, including the development and promotion of Afrikaans and the Afrikaans academic culture, especially in the northern parts of South Africa. His work pertaining to the development of architecture, literature, aviation, the visual and performing arts, history, libraries, museums and educational institutions comes under the spotlight. His private life is considered as well in order to portray his versatility as a person. The chapters have been subdivided to highlight the variety of matters he was involved in, and a chronological approach has been followed as is customary in a biography. The study is based on archival research. In particular, Engelenburg’s private collections were used, as well as the private collections of some of his contemporaries. Engelenburg assumes a central place in the biography, with special focus on how he perceived and experienced conditions and everyday life in South Africa from the point of view of his transnational European background. His role as influential opinion-maker and political commentator on local and international politics is highlighted. His ties with political leaders and his involvement in government affairs are emphasised. The study also refers to his continued contact with his motherland, the Netherlands, and with the Dutch language. After the Anglo- Boer War, he realised that the languages of the future in South Africa would be Afrikaans (not Dutch), alongside English. His continuing support for Afrikaans as a language of instruction in schools and universities and the development of the Afrikaans literature, as well as his support for the standardization of Afrikaans helped to establish Afrikaans as an official language alongside English and Dutch in South Africa. Engelenburg’s active contribution to the work of the Zuid-Afrikaanse Akademie voor Taal, Lettere en Kuns (now the Suid- Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns), helped to put the organization on a sound footing for future development. The Akademie can be seen as a living monument to his work in South Africa. / PhD (History)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2015.

This dissertation is a historical biography of F.V. Engelenburg (1863-1938) and covers the period from 1889 to 1938, when Engelenburg lived and worked in South Africa. The study situates Engelenburg in the historical landscape of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The focus is mainly on Engelenburg’s journalistic career at De Volksstem, but attention is also given to his many other interests, including the development and promotion of Afrikaans and the Afrikaans academic culture, especially in the northern parts of South Africa. His work pertaining to the development of architecture, literature, aviation, the visual and performing arts, history, libraries, museums and educational institutions comes under the spotlight. His private life is considered as well in order to portray his versatility as a person. The chapters have been subdivided to highlight the variety of matters he was involved in, and a chronological approach has been followed as is customary in a biography. The study is based on archival research. In particular, Engelenburg’s private collections were used, as well as the private collections of some of his contemporaries. Engelenburg assumes a central place in the biography, with special focus on how he perceived and experienced conditions and everyday life in South Africa from the point of view of his transnational European background. His role as influential opinion-maker and political commentator on local and international politics is highlighted. His ties with political leaders and his involvement in government affairs are emphasised. The study also refers to his continued contact with his motherland, the Netherlands, and with the Dutch language. After the Anglo- Boer War, he realised that the languages of the future in South Africa would be Afrikaans (not Dutch), alongside English. His continuing support for Afrikaans as a language of instruction in schools and universities and the development of the Afrikaans literature, as well as his support for the standardization of Afrikaans helped to establish Afrikaans as an official language alongside English and Dutch in South Africa. Engelenburg’s active contribution to the work of the Zuid-Afrikaanse Akademie voor Taal, Lettere en Kuns (now the Suid- Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns), helped to put the organization on a sound footing for future development. The Akademie can be seen as a living monument to his work in South Africa. / PhD (History)--North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2015.

In South Africa, the linguistic hegemony of English over the African languages in the academic field reproduces unequal power relationships between their speakers. The present study shows that an intervention shaped by a counterhegemonic ideology can change the attitudes of Black university students, key players in spearheading social change. Usign statistical analysis and survey methodologies, this research explored the hegemonic role of English as the only language of learning and teaching (LoLT) in the discipline of Computer Science (CS) at Rhodes University. The study found that those speakers of an African language who are the most disadvantaged by the use of English as LoLT are also the most likely to resist a more extensive use of their mother tongue as an alternative. A group of such students were involved in the development and use of an online glossary of CS terms translated, explained and exemplified in an African language (isiXhosa). This experience increased the support for the use of African languages as additional LoLT, even in the Englishdominated field of study of Computer Science. This is an initial step towards promoting linguistic equality between English and African languages and social equality between their speakers.

The specific instances of R.H.W. Shepherd and H.I.E. Dhlomo are used in this thesis to investigate some of the many factors that influence the formation of a colonial literature, such as politics, social structures and personal ideals. By isolating the Lovedale Mission Press ~s a "contact zone" - a·place where the cultures of the colonizer and the colonized come into direct contact with each other - it is possible to trace how the interaction between these cultures shaped the writing of a particular African writer, H.I.E. Dhlomo. This is done through an analysis of historical factors that shaped the policy of the Lovedale Mission Press in the twentieth century: the development of liberalism in South Africa, the·role of the missionary in African education, the function ofa liberal magazine such as The South African Outlook and the appointment of an ambitious missionary, R.I.W. Shepherd, to the position of Director of Publications. This necessarily included a study of Shepherd's vision of African literature. On the other hand, this study takes cognisance of the factors that shaped Herbert Dhlomo's vision of literature: the development of African nationalism, the entrenchment of segregation as a politial doctrine, and most importantly, his struggle to have his creative writing published by the Lovedale Press. It is shown how Shepherd's vision of what African literature should entail contrasted with Dhlomo's, and how, as a result, Dhlomo deliberately structured his critical writing as a response to Shepherd's Eurocentric approach to African literature.

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Substantial contributions have been made by lesbian and gay developmental theorists in understanding the development of lesbian and gay sexual identities, or what has come to be known as the coming out process. “Coming out of the closet” has become a central metaphor, in western contexts, for the recognisable process gay men and lesbians undergo in order to claim a relatively stable and enduring sexual identity, while overcoming obstacles such as heterosexism. Lesbians’ sexual identities are examined in this thesis through a Foucauldian lens which is fused with a narrative-discursive perspective. The aim of this study is not to trace a progressive development of identity, but rather to consider how lesbians in this study are located within a specific context, namely, a historically white university in post-apartheid South Africa, and how their identities are dynamic products of ever-shifting socio-historical spaces. Eight lesbians’ stories are analysed using the narrative-discursive method, which allows for a consideration for how the construction and negotiation of identities is shaped and constrained by social and discursive conditions. The women in this study do utilise the concept of coming out to some extent in their stories, but this narrative does not entirely account for their experiences. Instead, these women’s accounts reflect the way in which they personally experience heterosexism, and how they constantly negotiate their sexual identities within certain social and geographical spaces. When the nuances of lesbians’ contexts are taken into account, it becomes clear that claiming a lesbian identity is more than just about “coming out”, and rather about an on-going process of identity management.

This thesis focuses on a transformational but disregarded period in New Zealand’s twentieth century history, the era from the arrival of the Marines in 1942 to the arrival of Rock Around the Clock in 1956. It examines one of the chief agents in this metamorphosis: the impact of American culture. During this era the crucial conduits of that culture were movies, music and comics. The aims of my thesis are threefold: to explore how New Zealanders responded to this cultural trinity, determine the key features of their reactions and assess their significance. The perceived modernity and alterity of Hollywood movies, musical genres such as swing, and the content and presentation of American comics and ‘pulps’, became the sources of heated debate during the midcentury. Many New Zealanders admired what they perceived as the exuberance, variety and style of such American media. They also applauded the willingness of the cultural triptych to appropriate visual, textual and musical forms and styles without respect for the traditional classifications of cultural merit. Such perceived standards were based on the privileged judgements of cultural arbiters drawn from members of New Zealand’s educational and civic elites. Key figures within these elites insisted that American culture was ‘low’, inferior and commodified, threatening the dominance of a sacrosanct, traditional ‘high’culture. Many of them also maintained that these American cultural imports endangered both the traditionally British nature of our cultural heritage, and New Zealand’s distinctively ‘British’ identity. Many of these complaints enfolded deeper objections to American movies, music and literary forms exemplified by comics and pulps. Significant intellectual and civic figures portrayed these cultural modes as pernicious and malignant, because they were allegedly the product of malignant African-American, Jewish and capitalist sources, which threatened to poison the cultural and social values of New Zealanders, especially the young. In order to justify such attitudes, these influential cultural guardians portrayed the general public as an essentially immature, susceptible, unthinking and puritanical mass. Accordingly, this public, supposedly ignorant of the dangers posed by American culture, required the intervention and protection of members of this elite. Responses to these potent expressions of American culture provide focal points which both illuminate and reflect wider social, political and ideological controversies within midcentury New Zealand. Not only were these reactions part of a process of comprehension and negotiation of new aesthetic styles and media modes. They also represent an arena of public and intellectual contention whose significance has been neglected or under-valued. New Zealanders’ attitudes towards the new cinematic, literary and musical elements of American culture occurred within a rich and revealing socio-political and ideological context. When we comment on that culture we reveal significant features of our own national and cultural selves.