Masters Degrees (English, Media and Performance Studies)
Recent Submissions
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An exploration of how language and context augment the construction of a prototypical female identity represented in the portrayal of Desdemona and Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeare’s Othello and Macbeth.
(2022)My research is based on a qualitative study of the characterisation of females in two Shakespearean tragedies, Othello and Macbeth. The focus of the study is the impact of language and contextual factors of the Shakespearean ... -
"High talk: a discussion of W B Yeats' aesthetic stance as focused in his New Poems and Last Poems.
(1996)Abstract available in PDF. -
A study on how community participation in community radio stations can have a positive impact on the sustainability of community radio stations in the Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality.
(2021)This qualitative exploratory study examines the sustainability of community participation in community radio within two community radio stations located in Buffalo Community Metropolitan Municipality. The study is an ... -
Narrative framing: deconstructing Pi’s truth in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.
(2021)The primary focus of this dissertation is Pi Patel, Yann Martel’s main protagonist in Life of Pi (2001). Martel’s novel is framed by an Author’s note that introduces a story that “will make you believe in God” (xii). ... -
Decoding news and reception: an investigation into the discourses on selected Facebook news sites around reports of the South African farmland attacks (2017 to 2018)
(2022)This qualitative study investigates the encoding and decoding of farm attacks in South Africa during the period 2017- 2018. The corpus for analytical inquiry is drawn from the online news sites BBC News and IOL and the ... -
Representations of home, dislocation, and resilience in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah.
(2021)This dissertation aims to explore the literary representations of ‘home’, dislocation and resilience in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013). Through a close-text analysis of the migrant trajectory from dislocation ... -
Okorafor’s organic fantasy: an Africanfuturist approach to science fiction and gender in Lagoon.
(2021)SThis dissertation critically examines Nnedimma Nkemdili (Nnedi) Okorafor’s novel Lagoon (2014a) in terms of how it exemplifies Africanfuturism. I will explore how Okorafor conceptualises her own genre – Africanfuturism ... -
Representations of home, dislocation, and nostalgia in select contemporary South African novels.
(2021)This dissertation analyses the literary representation of home in Michiel Heyns’s Lost Ground (2011) and Zoë Wicomb’s October (2014), by investigating the fictional reflection of the (e)migrant’s ‘home visit’. I am interested ... -
Re-inventing Zuluness : from ethnic separatism to democratic multiculturalism.
(1994)Abstract available in PDF. -
South African writers in exile: a search for identity and common threads in their writing.
(1995)Abstract available in PDF. -
The familial reconfiguration of the subject of cultural discourse in Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous conditions.
(1996)Abstract available in PDF. -
Using self-identity and brand personality in advertising appeals: a Unilever Dove case study.
(2020)The rise in popular culture and the growing power of brands led to factoring consumers and their self-concept, their buying power and interests as a part of the strategies implemented for the purpose of advertising. Brand ... -
A study of masculinity, memory and trauma in Niq Mhlongo’s Way Back Home.
(2019)In this dissertation I explore the representations of ‘struggle’ masculinity and the trauma of black masculinity in Niq Mhlongo’s Way Back Home (2013). My primary focus in this regard is Kimathi, the novel’s protagonist. ... -
Towards a transnational and intercultural literary perspective : continuity or discontinuity?
(2001)Abstract available in the PDF. -
Telling tales: life writing from the inner-city and a critical reflection on the ethics of non-fiction storytelling.
(2020)This thesis comprises a creative component entitled They won't come for us here, and a reflective component which examines the ethics of non-fiction storytelling. They won't come for us here is a compilation of life-writing ... -
Race trouble: An exploration of race relations in Zebra crossing, coconut and the book of memory by Meg Vandermerwe, Kopano Matlwa and Petina Gappah.
(2020)Despite the formalised abolishment of both apartheid and colonialism, it would in many respects be remiss to conclude that the legacy of these systems of oppression do not continue to exert some level of influence on the ... -
From dislocation to redefinition of home in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup and Ishtiyaq Shukri’s The Silent Minaret : a postcolonial perspective of home.
(2018)This study aims to investigate new understandings of ‘home’ as represented through the experiences of the migrant characters in Nadine Gordimer’s The Pickup and Ishtiyaq Shukri’s The Silent Minaret. I am interested in the ... -
A critical analysis of uncanny characters in Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and The Graveyard Book.
(2018)In this dissertation I examine uncanny characters in Neil Gaiman’s novels Coraline (2002) and The Graveyard Book (2008). I explore what constitutes uncanny characters in his narratives and the consequent effects these ... -
Representations of masculinity in selected novels with South African settings by Bryce Courtenay.
(2019)This dissertation examines masculinities created by Bryce Courtenay as represented within his South African-set novels, The Power of One, published in 1989, Tandia, which appeared in 1991, and Whitethorn, published in 2005. ... -
Women’s voices, precarity, and commercialism in selected dystopian South African fiction.
(2019)This dissertation examines the use and effects of women’s voices, precarity, and commercialism in selected dystopian South African fiction, namely Moxyland (2008) by Lauren Beukes, For the Mercy of Water (2012) by Karen ...