Environmental enrichment can improve poultry welfare and productivity by decreasing harmful behaviours, like fear or feather pecking. Having shown that chickens used an environment more when it was enriched, we then identified specific preferences in order to design more effective enrichment. First, we found that televised stimuli were attractive to chickens, that their regular presentation reduced fear, and that the images should incorporate movement, brightness, colour, and moderate complexity. Projecting them onto the walls might be a practicable strategy. Second, farmers reported that playing the radio reduced aggression, improved the birds’ health and increased productivity; this is also one of the easiest ways of enriching the farmers’ environment. Third, our findings that the presence of a familiar odourant reduced chicks’ fear of novel places, birds and food suggest that olfactory therapy could minimize certain behavioural problems. Finally, providing chickens with bunches of string promoted foraging and exploration, sustained lengthy interest, and reduced potentially injurious inter-bird pecking and feather damage in the laboratory and at a commercial farm. Clearly, extraneous stimulation is important to chickens. The provision of appropriate visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile enrichment is likely to improve their quality of life.

A reluctance to accept unfamiliar foods can damage chickens’ welfare and performance. In the present study, chicks were reared on a mash diet presented in hoppers treated with vanillin and acclimatized to a regime of brief food withdrawal and return. At 8 days of age they were presented with the same food in an unfamiliar form (crumbs) when the hoppers had been treated with either vanillin or water. The presence of the familiar odourant accelerated feeding and increased food consumption over a 30 min test. The results are discussed in terms of impaired food recognition, neophobia, and the strategic relevance of olfactory therapy.

This dissertation recovers women playwrights’ examples of prostitution and severe forms of sex trafficking with the aim of providing a more comprehensive and diverse selection of theatrical materials that focus on the sex industry. I assert that the first western woman playwright, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, authored three plays about prostitution (Abraham, Paphnutius, and Callimachus) that deserve inclusion in the western canon of drama because they influence popular portrayals of the figure of the fallen woman prostitute in Alexandre Dumas fils’ The Lady of the Camellias (1852), Arthur Wing Pinero’s The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (1893), Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie (1922), and Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). Moreover, they are essential to our understanding of plays about gender based violence and the fallen woman genre within the larger arc of theatre history. Chapter 1 tracks the containment strategies that American and European societies employed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to control prostitution and abolish white slavery. Chapter 2 develops the virgin/whore dichotomy as a theoretical lens through which I examine how the theatrical figure of the fallen woman is categorized, made vulnerable to gender based violence, and punished for prostitution to uphold a sexual and moral double standard. Chapter 3 focuses on tracing the four characteristics of a new dramatic figure, what I term the “sex trafficked been-to,” in Lucy Kirkwood’s it felt empty when the heart went at first but it is alright now, Rebecca Prichard’s Dream Pill, Cora Bissett and Stef Smith’s ROADKILL, and Catherine Cunningham-Huston’s The Walk. The “sex trafficked been-to” is (1) sex trafficked to either Italy or the UK; (2) originates in poor and rural areas of Nigeria; (3) is affected by liminal states and the blood oaths of juju ceremonies; and (4) is based on the backgrounds and testimonials of sex trafficking survivors. In contrast to the fallen woman who turns to God for redemption or the passive white slave awaiting heroic male rescue, the sex trafficked been-to has the self-determination to seek alternative futures, such as escaping from captivity and requesting political asylum.

Shakespeare: Made in México examines the implications of Shakespeare in México through a study of cross-cultural exchange between Mexican culture and Shakespeare as a global industry. The conscious mobilization of cultural differences in the service of Shakespeare’s worldwide currency deserves a more inclusive approach; it is time to recognize the potential of other locales in the production of knowledge. The dissertation identifies three main categories of analysis: 1) the development of arts initiatives in México is examined, focusing on the government’s incorporation of culture into the national project; 2) the impact of Shakespeare in Mexican film and television is examined to show how Shakespeare has been shaped by Mexican popular culture; 3) the work of avant-garde and contemporary theatre artists who have created and devised Mexican productions of Shakespeare that have surfaced in moments of marked political struggle. This evocation of celebration, reception, and implied universalism builds on a long-term, sustained commitment to Shakespeare as a model of transcendental human essence—one this study identifies as functioning as both a tool of national preservation and one of cultural resistance to the rapidly changing colonial regimes of the past two centuries in México.

These relationships are addressed in two ways: first, by reading ideas of Mexican national culture produced in politically constrained fields; second, by remapping a vast—but familiar—terrain of national culture in México. Shakespeare: Made in México posits three points that set the precedent for a study of Shakespeare in México. First, by exploring the inclusion of Shakespeare into Mexican theatrical practices, this study considers how localized performances of Shakespeare may be used to speak back to empire and to critique the culture of imperialism on its own terms. Second, this study identifies unique instances in which México territorializes Shakespeare. Finally, the dissertation shows how Shakespeare is used to interpret culture, and more importantly to excavate questions of diversity in existing canonical models currently encountered in classrooms. This project challenges the supposed authority embedded in notions of Eurocentric narrative and methodology—ones that privilege their archives as the authoritative sources for understanding a specific history and approach to Shakespeare studies.

Video images of screensavers attract domestic chicks. This study identified their attractive attributes. One focal chick in groups of three was observed for 5 min daily on 10 consecutive days from 2 days of age. Chicks spent little time in the end zones of the home box in the absence of video stimulation (Experiment 1). Videos differing in one attribute were then presented simultaneously at opposite ends of the cage. Chicks spent longer near moving than still videos (Experiment 2), bright than dull videos (Experiment 3), coloured than black-and-white videos (Experiment 4), a complex “Fish” screensaver than a simple “Square” screensaver (Experiment 5), and a more complex cartoon than the Fish screensaver (Experiment 6). Repeated exposure increased approach and preferences were strongest for complex stimuli.