This thesis contributes to the historiography of women in medicine by exploring, in-depth, one small specialty, public health, which, from 1974, offered women doctors working within it equality of opportunity with men for career development. At that time, most women doctors working in the English health service were relegated to junior or support roles, their particular needs for family-friendly working environments being largely ignored. This research examines the reasons behind the development of these equal opportunities and the subsequent rapid trajectory of women doctors in public health, comparing it with the much slower progress made by female colleagues in hospital medicine and general practice. In considering the factors helping or hindering women’s advance in medicine from 1974, it proposes that these changes occurred in public health because the specialty was not tied to the pyramidal model of medicine, developed in the 1930s by senior male doctors for male doctors, which dominated other specialties and which stifled progress. An innovative feature of this research, following women’s entry to consultant and training posts in proportions equal to men in public health, is to highlight their subsequent move into major strategic roles within the health service management structure from the late 1980s. Interviews with senior public health men and women doctors help shed light on how this move was achieved and how women in strategic positions were able to combine high profile careers with domestic responsibilities. Also includes five transcipts of interviews : The five interviewees, whose career stories are presented here - Professor Sian Griffiths, Professor Sheila Adam, Professor Mala Rao, Dr Sue Atkinson and Professor Fiona Sim - were selected, with the help of the Faculty of Public Health, for their considerable achievement in strategic leadership roles in public health practice, whether in leading complex organisation, chairing national policy committees, leading international work, promoting education and development.

Ce mémoire est une lecture hantologique du roman The Double Hook de Sheila Watson. Une telle lecture accorde une importance particulière aux fantômes et aux spectres qui se trouvent dans un texte ou qui le hantent. La hantologie étant un mouvement de pensée introduit par Jacques Derrida dans Spectres de Marx, cet ouvrage de Derrida se veut à la fois un point de départ et un site important de mon analyse auquel je retourne tout au long de ce mémoire. De plus, à travers les écrits de plusieurs spécialistes de la littérature canadienne-anglaise tels que Marlene Goldman, Margaret Turner et Cynthia Sugars, ce mémoire explore ce que le roman de Watson permet de découvrir à propos de ce qui hante l’imaginaire collectif canadien. Dans une première partie de ce mémoire, je concentre mon analyse sur les spectres textuels qui hantent les pages du roman de Watson. Les mythes autochtones, les récits chrétiens, les conventions du ‘Western’ et du roman régional, ainsi que les traces de plusieurs textes modernistes, semblent hanter la structure du roman et l’utilisation du langage qui crée l’histoire présentée par Watson. Dans le deuxième chapitre de ce mémoire, mon analyse se tourne vers les fantômes et les personnages fantomatiques qui existent dans le monde fictionnel créé par Watson. Les personnages tels que la mère de la famille Potter et Coyote sont fréquemment associés aux tropes du gothique et lus comme étant des spectres et ce sont de telles lectures qui ponctuent mon analyse de cet important roman. / This thesis consists of a study of haunting, both at the textual and fictional level, in Sheila Watson’s The Double Hook. In this hauntology of the novel, I explore the texts and cultural archetypes that haunt Watson’s novel as well as the ghosts, spectral figures, and haunting spaces and places represented in the novel. The theoretical movement of hauntology introduced by Jacques Derrida in Specters of Marx is a fundamental work in contemporary studies of the tropes of the Gothic and of a more generalized haunting that threatens notions of stability in our understanding of existence. Moreover, the haunting figures and texts in Watson’s novel subvert the heterogenous conception of a national discourse in Canada. The insights provided by scholars such as Marlene Goldman, Margaret Turner, and Cynthia Sugars, who are concerned with what Watson’s use of spectral figures in her narrative accomplishes in relation to writing the settler-colonizer nation of Canada, contribute to informing my argument about the place Watson’s novel occupies in the Canadian collective imaginary. In the first chapter of this thesis, I focus on the textual hauntings in the pages of Watson’s novel. Indigenous myths, Christian rituals, conventions of the western and regional novel, and modernist texts haunt the novel’s structure, content, and the language that constitutes it. In the second chapter of this thesis, I direct my attention towards the haunting and haunted figures that exist in the world created by Watson. In both chapters, my goal is to converse with the specters I see in the novel, to give a voice to what is not explicitly said and to find what lies between the fragments of Watson’s experimental prose.

After scholars started conducting research on the medieval Sheela-na-gig carvings, a number of theories regarding the purpose and origin of the figure have been suggested. The question has been tackled through many different approaches, but still remains unfinished as there are no written records explaining what the Sheela-na-gig figure actually is. Scholars have divided into different areas, approaching the discussion from different disciplines: art history, medieval social history, and religious history (both Christian and pre-Christian) to name a few. As the figure is usually found on Christian buildings but is distinguished by very sexual imagery, it leaves the door open for many interpretations. This thesis looks at two common theories on what the Sheela-na-gig is; one which is viewing her as a Romanesque warning against lust and sin, and one which argues that the figure is a folk deity used as an amulet for childbirth, symbolising both life and death. By using discourse theory and a comparative method, this thesis compares the descriptions and arguments of the different theories, and studies the intention behind them. The thesis then shows how the theories choose to focus their search for evidence in order to support their own perspective, while also excluding information which does not serve their particular agenda.

This study is concerned with modern Christian poetry in Afrikaans. Afrikaans poetry, which initially carried the clear stamp of the Afrikaner's Calvinistic view of life, gradually assumed a new image to the extent that it could no longer be recognised as religious and specifically Calvinistic poetry. To the contrary, modern Afrikaans Christian poetry is the expression of a contemporary conceptualisation of the very same gospel. The occasional violent reaction especially of conservative institutions to so called "unchristian" modern poetry in Afrikaans during the past three decades, has prompted this study which attempts to illustrate that modern Afrikaans poetry still exhibits a strong Christian element. The essential qualities of contemporary Christian poetry in Afrikaans are illustrated in the discussion of the works of particular leading Afrikaans poets. Chapter 3 attempts to indicate a transitional stage between traditional and modern Christian poetry by means of an overview of the latest tendencies and approaches, with brief references to the recent poetry of the Louws, the poetry of Peter Blum as the initial exponent of the poetry of the Sixties, and the poetry of Ina Rousseau. The work of Sheila Cussons, eminent Roman Catholic (and thus also Christian) poet who is probably the most impressive contemporary exponent of metaphysical/mystic poetry in Afrikaans, is discussed in chapter 4. Chapter 5 illustrates the traditional Calvinistic Christian point of view and Christian experience as represented in the poetry of I.L. de Villiers. The poetification of the ministry adds new dimension to religions poetry in Afrikaans. Chapter 6 constitutes a discussion of the works of T.T . Cloete, the most significant contemporary Reformed poet in Afrikaans indicating the extent to which the many related facets embodied in his poetry consistently reflect a Christian attitude and are unified in and encompassed by the principle of Soli Deo Gloria. Chapter 7, by way of conclusion, reviews the religious poetry of Lina Spies and Petra Müller who write accessible popular poetry, nevertheless exploring interesting references. In conjunction with the poetry of Ina Rosseau, this poetry represents a contribution to modern Afrikaans religious poetry from a feminine point of view

The broad focus of this study is on how, through inequalities in power in constructed human socio-political, socio-economic and legal structures, the value and dignity of human life is destroyed. The researcher as artist wished to represent these observations though visual metaphor, metonymy and synecdoche in an installation, "Follow the thread". The dissertation contextualises that work within the works of Sheila Hicks, Amita Makan, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Ana Mendieta, all of whom use organic materials related to ideas about life and death. The first three use fibres as a metaphor for life. Through the analysis of metaphors in the selected artworks, the allusiveness of these metaphors is examined to offer insights about their indirect, referential, and evocative nature. It is revealed in the study that the success of metaphors operating within the visual language is closely linked to their complexity, their range scope and multimodality, and their ability to provoke multivalent, layered interpretations of artworks. My sculptural drawings that resemble fragments of the human body in the installation are a metaphor for the abuse of human dignity and for the disregard those in power have when life is reduced to bare life, rather than life appropriate to a legal citizen. / Arts and Music / M.V.A.