One way of exploring musical identity, as a phenomenon, is to listen to the life stories of musicians. This research interpreted the narratives of undergraduate students of Western Art Music at a South African tertiary institution and described the experiences and the lives of these music students, and the meanings that they attribute to their identities. The participating music students described what they perceive as real-life experiences and defined their views on human self-definition with reference to their chosen study field. The research approach entails a philosophical framework of hermeneutic interpretivism. Such a non-positivist approach sees the lived experiences of the music students not on their own, but as depending on interpretation by the researcher to establish the meanings these students gave to musical identity. The methodology includes a qualitative approach which was done from a narrative perspective through personal storytelling and a thematic analysis of the data. Data triangulation ensures verification of findings by the author and individual participants agreed upon the interpretations of the researcher of their narrations. Participating music students confirmed that personal storytelling assisted them in understanding their musicianship in a better way, as well as gave them a clearer perspective on personal musical experiences. The influence of practising and performing on musical identity was described, but the interaction with music teachers was found to be a significant influential factor on musical identity. The perceptions of South African society in general, with reference to Western Art Music, were found to be detrimental to the musical identities of these students. Musical identities were found to be interwoven in relationships, embedded in the realities of the field of music education and existing deep in the inner selves of these music students. / Thesis (DMus)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Music / DMus / Unrestricted

The purpose of this life story study was to explore the experiences of a woman high school teacher-coach and the factors that have contributed to her maintained involvement in sport leadership throughout her life. One participant took part in one timeline interview and four subsequent semi-structured interviews over several months. The resultant transcripts were analysed using a combination of narrative and thematic analysis. The findings of this study provided insight into four broad themes: passion for sport, perception of gender, personal traits, and community and belonging. This study contributes a unique, in-depth, exploration of life as a woman teacher-coach in Canada, and the facilitating factors for long term sport involvement. Future studies may explore the experiences of women volunteer coaches. / Graduate

Masters of Art / This M.A. mini-thesis seeks to open up the post-apartheid South African biopic as a topic for serious historical scrutiny. While book-length written biographies published in the post-apartheid (and apartheid periods) are the subjects of a now quite extensive historiographical literature, biography on film – including in the form of filmic dramas – has been hitherto entirely ignored. Social history or marginalised lives and not political lives of struggle against apartheid have been the predominant subgenre within this emerging field: with sixteen biopics having been produced in the 2010s. But the field is dominated by white men. This thesis showcases the story-telling gifts of one young coloured film-maker through a meticulously detailed analysis of “visual story-telling” and “visual language” used in his two award-winning gang biopics, Noem My Skollie (2016) and Ellen. Die Stories van Ellen Pakkies (2018). Read in the context of the extended processes of production of these two films in which the central protagonists played a shaping background role, the thesis explores and compares the linear chronological, four-chapter, narrative structure of Noem My Skollie with the architecture of “the parallel narrative” used in the deeply disturbing Ellen. Die Storie van Ellen Pakkies (2018) The thesis is a celebration of the film-making talent of Daryne Joshua.

Just after midnight on a chilly April night in 2005, the author finds himself homeless in Hawaii, searching for a place to sleep. The account that follows is the true story of a young man's misadventures on the road as he attempts to reconcile his wanderlust with a need for order and security. This work of creative nonfiction reconstructs the first half of the summer the narrator spent wandering Hawaii. Specifically, this section concentrates on the author's experiences on the island of Oahu. There, the narrator, who constantly changes his name, is stuck at a crossroads; he is torn between his desires for the woman and the life he left in Texas and his need for exploration. At first he drifts along the road eating beef jerky sandwiches, ducking beer bottles flung at him by locals, and camping illegally in public parks. Eventually he finds work and belonging at a new age surf shop on the North Shore, but this stagnant environment only reinforces his desire to wander. After nearly drowning in a surfing accident and being threatened by the owner of the board he destroys, the narrator returns to the road where he has encounters with a military man, Mormons, fellow transients, the police, and a chicken fighter who tries to seduce him. Eventually he leaves Oahu for the island of Kauai. There he finds hope and friendship among the bohemians living communally on organic farms. However, his resolve to live a freewheeling lifestyle is ultimately tested one night by a band of drug runners who confront him on a deserted beach. This master's thesis celebrates the tradition of the great American road story. While the narrator retraces the footsteps of many who have set out on the open road, his personal account and voice reflect the modern values and cultural forces that lead many of his generation to wander America in search of something more.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In this thesis, I deal with the task of computationally processing stories with a focus on multidisciplinary ends, specifically in Digital Humanities and Cultural Analytics. In the process, I collect, clean, investigate, and predict from two datasets. The first is a dataset of 2,302 open-source literary works categorized by the time period they are set in. These works were all collected from Project Gutenberg. The classification of the time period in which the work is set was discovered by collecting and inspecting Library of Congress subject classifications, Wikipedia Categories, and literary factsheets from SparkNotes. The second is a dataset of 6,991 open-source literary works categorized by the hierarchical location the work is set in; these labels were constructed from Library of Congress subject classifications and SparkNotes factsheets. These datasets are the first of their kind and can help move forward an understanding of 1) the presentation of settings in stories and 2) the effect the settings have on our understanding of the stories.

The preface, " Performing Brain Surgery: The Problematic Nature of Endings in Short Fiction," deals with the many and varied difficulties short story writers encounter when attempting to craft endings. Beginning with Raymond Carver and Flannery O’Connor and moving to my own work, I discuss some of the obscure criteria used to designate a successful ending, as well as the more concrete idea of the ending as a unifying element. Five short stories make up the remainder of this thesis: "In-between Girls," "Crocodile Man," "Surprising Things, Sometimes Amusing," "Good Jewelry," and "The Angular Degrees of Freedom."

The contrarian model assumes that inferior (superior) past performance can be used as a good indicator of future superior (inferior) performance. In this regard, recent research has integrated the relevance of business magazine cover stories as a possible indicator of this performance, serving as a signal to investors to adopt a particular contrarian investment strategy. This research study replicates with extension a United States-based study that examined whether cover stories acted as effective contrarian indicators. Cover stories from the Financial Mail were collected for a ten-year period to determine whether the nature of the content (classified as either negative, positive or neutral) can act as a useful predictor of future investment performance. The event study method was used to establish whether this future performance was contrarian or momentum in nature, by adjusting the featured company holding-period returns with three benchmark measures: the FTSE-JSE All Share index; a sector-specific index; and an industry-size-matched (ISM) peer company. Statistical tests suggested that while positive stories provided evidence of momentum holding-period return (HPR) performance, negative stories showed weak evidence of contrarian performance for a two-year period. However, when HPR was adjusted for sector or ISM index, most of the abnormal returns dissipated, with only weak evidence of contrarian performance for positive stories and momentum performance for negative stories. The results validated those of the United States-based study, that suggested that magazine cover stories do not function as suitable indicators of either momentum or contrarian performance. Copyright / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Icky Boy is a work of fiction, particularly a collection of short stories. Every story is set in a semi-fictional region of Southern Maine, most of them in the fictional town of Mousam. The collection begins with “Icky Boy,” the story of a shy, insecure young man who falls in love with a woman, Peg, he meets at the grocery store. Their relationship is complicated by the arrival of an unorthodox motivational speaker and by a freak accident that critically affects Peg. The second story, “Cardiac Fridays”, is about a retired professional wrestler, “Big” John Childs who tries to find excitement and purpose in his life (by helping out at a clinic that induces heart attacks in people looking for thrills) after retiring from his job and becoming estranged from his wife and son. “Bone Breaker” tells the story of a debt collector who is experiencing a mid-life crisis. In the process of pursuing a debtor he begins to have a change of heart and reevaluate his life. “Gravy Work” follows a young couple, Cheryl and Thurman, who experience relationship difficulties as a result of their different ambitions. They attempt to reconcile their personalities while also trying to move to a different city and coping with Thurman’s addiction to a new TV program. “Donor” is about half brothers, Arthur and Kevin, who don’t get along (due to Kevin’s rage disorder) and who haven’t found their niche in high school. The two boys begin contacting their respective sperm donors for insights into their past and their future potential. “Win-Win” is about a man’s return to his hometown to help bury an ex lover’s dead ex boyfriend. In his attempt to reconcile with his ex, the narrator reveals himself to be more conflicted and insecure than he previously thought. “Particular Human” is about two men who get a flat tire while driving and so stop at a late night fast food shop managed by a unique and uniquely sad individual. “Chassis” follows the tribulations of a small family as they cope with the matriarch’s failing health.

Massacre tracks three intersecting narratives during and after a fictionalized recounting of the infamous Virginia Tech massacre. In each characters’ search of individual re-creation and autonomy, they encounter the failings of their person, their families, their institutions, and their country. Formed by the great and impossible trauma that bound them, massacre survivors Connor and Tara navigate the tricky and deceitful terrain of a marriage that should never have been.

The preservation and reuse of existing buildings has become more and more prevalent as costs rise, sustainability popularizes, and urban areas continue to grow. These are all important issues in the contemporary design world, but what can the building provide after solving these problems that will make it just as long-lasting and useful as the previous program? Historic buildings are filled with the evidence of old building techniques, materiality and textures, and stories of the past, so why not allow the building to serve as not only a container of learning, but as a learning tool itself. The program of this thesis, a middle school for creative writing and literature, allows the decaying Old Engine Company 26 in Washington, DC's Langdon neighborhood to be adaptively reused as part of a comtemporary, imaginative education campus. The project explores the connection and balance between new and old and the combination of stories this creates. Old Engine Company 26 began its story in 1908, but the imposed design has been given a story--the story from the childrens' book, The Phantom Tollbooth. The past and present stories will intertwine with the story the future students create by interacting with, learning from, and influencing the school building. The thesis serves as an example of how an adaptive reuse project can provide unique cultural, educational, and sensory facilities while still fulfilling the sustainability, economic, and planning needs of design. / Master of Architecture