Will the "fight" ever end? : a critical reading of the metaphors and discourses that construct HIV/AIDS in an African context

In this thesis, I critically examine the discourses that inform how we conceptualise HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa as they are produced in a sample of Canadian news articles, two nonfiction texts - Stephanie Nolen's 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa and Jonathan Morgan and the Bambanani Women's Group's Long Life ... Positive HIV Stories - as well as two literary texts - John Le Carre's popular fiction novel The Constant Gardener and an anthology of stories and poems from Southern Africa titled Nobody Ever Said AIDS, compiled and edited by Nobantu Rasebotsa, Meg Samuelson and Kylie Thomas. Paying particular attention to the role of metaphor in discursive formation, I have found that military metaphors, usually used in conjunction with biomedical discourses, continue to dominate what is said about HIV/AIDS. However, the use of military metaphors to conceptualise HIV/AIDS contributes to stigma and limits the effectiveness of responses to the pandemic. I argue that accessing alternative metaphors and discourses, such as biopsychosocial discourse, can lead to a more layered - and more beneficial - conceptualisation of HIV/AIDS, encouraging a more active response to the pandemic.

Warren Hartman fonds, 1970, 1972-1996, 1998, n.d.

Warren Hartman was born in 1942 in Toronto, Ontario. He received a B.A. in Fine Arts and Drama from Brock University in 1981 and a Masters of Arts in Humanities at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1987. In the 1950s he did considerable work as a child-actor both in theatre and television. From 1953 to 1961 he was in the New Play Society under the direction of Dora Mavor Moore. His last two years there were spent as a scholarship student. From 1963 to 1966 he did an apprenticeship with Suzanne Mess, Head of Costume Design at The Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. In 1976 Warren attended a Master Class in Scenography at the Banff School of Fine Arts with Josef Svoboda. In the spring of 1970 Warren was a guest designer at Brock University and from 1970 to 1972 he remained at Brock as resident designer and special lecturer. During this time he was also an instructor and costume designer at Sheridan College in Oakville. It was in 1972 that he became the designer-in-residence at Brock University. From 1984 he held the position of Associate Professor at The Department of Fine Arts at Brock University until the fall of 1996. Some of the highlights of Warren’s career also include: stage managager with the Street Hat Players in Port Carling, Ontario, 1960-1961; a freelance designer for over 100 shows; costume coordinator(production manager) for the Canadian Opera Company, 1964 -1970; resident costume designer for The Canadian Opera Company, 1965- 1970; founder and artistic director of Dei Gelosi Campagnia, St.Catharines, Ontario, 1970-1973; freelance director of some thirty-five shows; co-producer for Quebec City Summer Stock Company, Quebec City, Quebec, 1975; a consultant with Alberta Culture for the Provincial Government of Alberta, 1986-1987 and associate artistic director at Theatre Network, Edmonton, Alberta, 1986-1987. Warren Hartman was the recipient of the Jean Chalmers Award for contributions to Canadian Theatre for persons 25 years of age or under, in 1965. He was a founding member of Associated Designers of Canada and was affiliated with Canadian Actors Equity. Warren Hartman died on Feb. 11, 1998 several days after suffering a massive stroke. A memorial service was held at Brock University in May of 1998 and a bursary fund was established in his name.

Youth Involvement in Organizational Decision Making: The Connection to Youth Initiative and Organizational Functioning

Studying positive adolescent development requires an examination of the mutually beneficial associations between youth and their environment. These youthcontext relations include both the contributions that youth make to others and society and the youth-context interactions that might predict positive youth outcomes. Community and youth-serving organizations, where youth may be involved in decision-making roles such as service delivery, advocacy, or on boards of directors, can provide one important context for youth contributions and for positive adolescent development. Research on the outcomes of youth involvement in organizational decision-making, however, is limited, and largely consists of exploratory qualitative studies. This dissertation is formatted as an integrated article dissertation. It begins with a review of the literature on contexts of structured youth activities and positive youth development. This review is intended to describe theory on development-context relations, in which development is considered an interactive process that occurs between individuals and their contexts, as it pertains the positive development of youth who are involved in various structured activities (e.g., volunteering). This description follows with a review of current research, and conclusions and rationale for the current studies. Following this theoretical and research background, the dissertation includes reports of two studies that were designed to address gaps in the research on youth involvement in organizational decision-making. The first was a qualitative research synthesis to elucidate and summarize the extant qualitative research on the outcomes of youth involvement in organizational decision making on adults and organizations. Results of this study suggested a number of outcomes for service provision, staff, and broader organizational functioning, including both benefits to organizations as well as some costs. The second study was a quantitative analysis of the associations among youth involvement, organizations' learning culture, and youth initiative, and relied on survey data gathered from adults and youth in community-based organizations with youth involvement. As expected, greater youth involvement in organizational decision making was associated with higher learning culture within the organization. Two dimensions of youth involvement, greater program engagement and relationships with adults, were related to greater youth initiative. A third dimension, sense of ownership, was not- .-.- associated with youth's level of initiative. Moreover, the association between relationships with adults and youth initiative was only significant in organizations with relatively low learning culture. Despite some limitations, these studies contribute to the research literature by providing some indication of the potential benefits and costs of youth involvement and by making an important contribution toward the early stages of context-level analyses of youth development. Findings have important implications for practitioners, funders, future research, and lifespan development theory.