The following study traces the transformation of an American identity from the sectional conflict through the end of the nineteenth century in an effort to understand how that identity eventually changed into something regarded and defined as distinctly southern. Mississippi offers fertile ground for such a study since the state so closely mirrored the American experience prior to the Civil War with episodes such as Indian removal, frontier living, the incorporation of racial slavery, and the creation of a social order based on independent landownership. Mississippi also aptly represented the traditional southern experience beginning with the Civil War due to the state’s participation in the formation of the Confederacy, staunch opposition to Reconstruction, the overthrow of Republican rule within the state in 1875, the codification of segregation and a white-supremacist social order, and the social, political, and economic oppression of the state’s African American population. Understanding the nuances of social identity formation requires a ground-level analysis to uncover how individuals created and reshaped their social identity in the wake of significant challenges to the established social structure. Diaries, personal correspondences, newspaper editorials, and reminiscences provide a wealth of information in revealing how Mississippians thought of themselves and others, how various groups (Unionists, Confederates, conservatives, and African Americans) fashioned competing social identities, and how those groups vied for legitimacy and control of the state through their interaction with one another. The transformation of a group or collective identity during a series of crises from the sectional conflict through the end of the nineteenth century not only reveals how Mississippians made sense of their surroundings and place within it but informed the parameters and outcomes by which the contest for social control of the state would be fought and won. The struggle for social control culminated in the establishment of a strict, whitesupremacist social order which lauded the exploits of the white inhabitants, vilified the actions of blacks, and ultimately defined the basic tenets of a southern identity for the next one hundred years.

In this study, I conducted ethnographic participant observations and semi-structured interviews at two evangelical congregations in central Florida, Free Baptist Church (FBC) and Cornerstone Church (CC), to explore how Christian nationalist ideas (CN) are negotiated, embraced, and/or rejected in church messaging and among congregants. I collected notes from eight sermons at each church and interviewed a total of 14 congregants regarding their concerns and lived experiences as Christians in the U.S. and their opinions on racial injustice. Expanding on previous research on CN, I incorporated Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an analytical framework to understand CN as inextricably connected to White evangelicalism, White supremacy, settler colonialism, and other systems of oppression. According to my findings, both FBC and CC operated as White heteropatriarchal institutional spaces being led exclusively by White men and adhering to complementarian doctrine which favors male headship, heteronormative marriage, and the subjugation of women and children to men's authority. The messaging in Sunday sermons at FBC and CC also contributed to the fostering of White, heteropatriarchal hegemonic ideals among congregants. Main themes included topics like boundary-making, the spiritual warfare, transcendence of social problems through a future global Christian Kingdom, "law and order" based on Christian principles, support for border control, and opposition to reproductive rights, affirmation of LGBTQ+ people, and racial justice initiatives such as Black Lives Matter and CRT (particularly among White participants). Ultimately, such messaging contributed to CN views among the majority of congregants I interviewed. This study is significant as it applies a CRT lens to provide a foundation for future research on CN that will extend beyond understanding CN as a distinct cultural framework and point scholars back to the White, heteropatriarchal social structure that sustains it.

This thesis investigates testimonies of three female authors from Latin America and the Middle East through scriptotherapy narratives which "give voice to previously repressed memories," defined by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Through the genre of autobiography, women have an opportunity to showcase acts of resistance towards the inner turmoil of colonial trauma that has been brought upon their existence. Decoloniality re-integrates the roots of colonial power into re-invigorated narratives that will become lineage. The only way that they can create their own identity is through "legending," Gilles Deleuze's conceptualized theoretical framework, which does not offer an escape from colonialism but utilizes its power to offer narratives of healing. As "scriptotherapy" narratives, these female authors are displaying resistance by circulating their stories to the global public and bringing communities together to understand that it is possible to stop the cycle of trauma and abuse that exists to keep the women of their culture repressed. I argue that Julia Alvarez and Azar Nafisi's scriptotherapy narratives encode trauma as acts of resistance in relation to turbulent political situations in their home countries. Julia Alvarez's Something to Declare: Essays (1998) details her experiences as a Latin American woman who has been displaced, bodily, from the Dominican Republic during its revolutionary period from April to September of 1965. Azar Nafisi's Things I've Been Silent About: Memories of a Prodigal Daughter (2008) paints a historical portrait of her Iranian family life during the Islamic Revolution of 1978–1979 and the toll the colonial powers had on cultivating her journey into womanhood. Adriana Páramo's My Mother's Funeral (2013) showcases writing as trauma reintegrated into a narrative in which personal ideologies and native Spanish language construct an intersectional space. Through storytelling, women are advocated for globally and consciously brought into the major Western culture to instigate change.

This dissertation expands scholarship that posits circulation as rhetoric with ethical implications. From November 2019 to Spring 2020, more than 33 white supremacist crimes occurred at Syracuse University. In response, NotAgainSU, a Black-led student organization formed, demanding accountability and transparency. Protesters built counterpublics with their hashtag activism through #NotAgainSU on Twitter and Instagram. I tracked #NotAgainSU across Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube using digital tools from November 11, 2019 to June 28, 2020; I explored how the hashtag intersected with news by collecting articles; and I conducted surveys and interviews to find out about the experiences of people who saw and circulated #NotAgainSU online. Protesters put counterpublic work into circulating the hashtag that enabled it to accrue collective affective and political value. The hashtag circulated to politicized audiences who joined protesters in what I am calling counterpublic circulation. However, people could appropriate that affective and social value and re-invest it in individual values that were not morally equivalent. This appropriation occurred through an overlapping and necessary kind of circulation that I am calling public circulation, by which I mean circulation that brings content to audiences who depoliticize the content and maintain their positions. The false equation of values is possible through the fictions of an equitable public sphere and a free market that are built into social media company's circulatory systems. News articles used a both-sides model and falsely positioned #NotAgainSU social media posts on equal terms with Syracuse University's arguments. Finally, in reactionary circulation, people could use the same means by which the protesters circulated #NotAgainSU to circulate the hashtag to oppositionally politicized audiences, who re-invested the work of the hashtag into reactionary affective and social capital. Reactionary circulation enabled people to form antifan reactionary identifications to the hashtag and ultimately reinscribed the fiction of white group identity.

The digital space has offered fertile new territory to connect with like-minded individuals and discuss anything and everything. This has resulted in the creation of the Manosphere, a collection of men concerned about the state of men and masculinity and how society views and treats men. One of the places online this community has found a home is the popular website Reddit, which offers the ability to create individual pages in which communities can form around and discuss and share information on almost any topic they desire. This study aimed to investigate the ways in which one community on Reddit, The Red Pill, views and discusses gender, sex, and consent through the use of thematic and linguistic analysis of popular content posts. Results found that this community does not have unique or novel views of any of the topics, but taken these views to their inevitable extremes. Seeing men as stoic, rational, and concerned with increasing their success in life as well as their number of sexual partners and encounters. Women, on the other hand, are seen as emotional, child-like, manipulative, and concerned with leeching off of men's financial and social success. This study represents one of the first examinations of the Manosphere and the emerging views of masculinity, femininity, and sex therein which have been ideologically connected to violent acts committed by young men within these groups. This study provides need detail and examples of how these online groups view gender and sex, and the ways in which they apply those views day-to-day out in the real world.

Increasingly defined by my status as a Nonimmigrant Alien, I have lived longer in the United States than in my native Venezuela. Knowing my stay in this country will be temporary, I examine feelings of uncertainty about my future by deconstructing communication—both visual and verbal. Through ambiguity I express anxieties on my personal circumstances and retain objectivity in regard to my process through intellectual inquiry. I layer words, images, and sound to mirror my frustrations, and project the conflict of my internal dialogue.

This study seeks to understand the development of early American ideas of race, religion, and gender as reflected in Indian and Barbary captivity narratives (tales of individuals taken captive by privateers in North Africa) and in plays that take American captives as their subject. Writers of both Indian and Barbary captivity narratives used racial and religious language – references to Indians and North Africans as demonic, physically monstrous, and animal – simultaneously to delineate Native American and North African otherness. The narrative writers reserved particular scorn for the figure of the Renegade – the willful cultural convert who chose to live among the Native Americans or adopt Islam and live among his North African captors. The narratives, too, reflect Early American gendered norms by defining the role of men as heads of household and women’s protectors, and by defining women by their status as dutiful wives and mothers. Furthermore, the narratives carefully treat the figure of the female captive with particular care – resisting implications of captive rape, even while describing graphic scenes of physical torture, and denying the possibility of willful transcultural sexual relationships.

While serving as governor of Mississippi from 1980 until 1984, William F. Winter envisioned education as a key to moving Mississippi away from poverty. He championed educational reform as the means for improving schools with low student achievement. From the beginning of his tenure, Winter?s goal was to improve K-12 education by implementing three needed improvements: public kindergarten, compulsory attendance, and a lay board of education. During the first two years of his administration, Winter struggled to gain support from within the legislative body itself. Mores of Mississippi, which relegated African Americans to a lesser role of social status, were difficult to overcome without causing a great deal of social upheaval. Winter?s goal of educational reform was inclusive and not just aimed at the Whites of Mississippi. This necessitated carefully calculated planning. It was not until a controversial ending to the 1982 regular session that Winter began to explore options of calling a special session and promoting the goals for education to the constituents of the legislators. Through a series of nine public forums that were carefully crafted to explore the issues and spotlight the legislators for that particular venue, Winter and his band of young supporters, called the ?Boys of Spring?, were able to bring about a paradigm shift in attitudes and beliefs. The focus of this study is to examine Winter?s leadership style, relate the story of reform, and highlight one man?s dream for his state. Winter was a master at surrounding himself with a high quality and high energy staff, designing a plan for success, and knowing what changes needed to be made and how to bring them about effectively. Specifically, this study will highlight hard work with purpose. It will also illustrate that those closest to a problem or issue should always be part of the solution to the problem, and finally, the study will show how a leader is only as good as the people with whom he or she surrounds himself/herself, with. The efforts that resulted in this study could and should be used to solve other problems of this society, especially those related to education.

No description available.

No description available.