This dissertation is an ethnographic study of how members of the Indo-Guyanese community traveled from Guyana to New York City, carrying with them distinct understandings of Hinduism informed by their multiple dislocations and how they utilize religion as ideology and practice to help cultivate their identities as Indo-Guyanese Americans. I argue religion as a mobile concept, what I have termed as ‘religion on the move,’ gives a theoretical frame to understand how devotees adapt religion to help them navigate their identities in unknown territories. By studying more than devout individuals in places of worship, I have followed Caribbean Hinduism and Indo-Guyanese Hindus in New York City to various sites to appreciate how religion informs their experiences, operates on different scales (spatially, politically, and temporally), and negotiates power structures. I found that the Indo-Guyanese Hindu community asserts their ethnicity through Caribbean Hinduism to become visible, to overcome marginalization and to claim belonging in the United States. / 2019-10-17

Orientador: Antonio Celso Ferreira / Resumo: Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar a presença do pensamento racial entre os membros da elite letrada paulista, associada ao Instituto Histórico e Geográfico de São Paulo, entre os anos de 1894 e 1940. O IHGSP, um dos principais núcleos da intelectualidade paulista no período estudado, publicava uma revista anual com temas relacionados principalmente à geografia, história, etnologia, assim como trabalhos biográficos e genealógicos. O estudo teve como foco de suas análises todos os artigos publicados na revista até o volume XXXVIII, com especial atenção àqueles que se dedicavam exclusivamente às problemáticas de fundo racial. Essas produções culturais oferecem um panorama bastante amplo sobre como os autores da revista se inserem nos debates raciais das primeiras décadas do século XX, e também como seus trabalhos contribuíram para a consolidação de uma imagem simbólica e ideológica a respeito da chamada raça paulista / Abstract: This research has as its purpose analyse the presence of the racial thought among the members of the literary elite of São Paulo state (paulista) associated to the Historic and Geographic Institute of São Paulo (IHGSP), within the years of 1894 and 1940 The IHGSP, one of the main centers of the intellectuality in São Paulo in the studied period, published an annual magazine with articles related mainly to geography, history and etnology, as well as biographical and genealogical works. The study had as focus of its analysis all the articles published in this magazine up to the volume XXXVIII, with special attention to those which concentrated exclusively to the racial problems. These cultural outputs offer a wide view on how themselves in the racial debates of the first decades of the 20 century, and also how their work contributed to the consolidation of a symbolic image of the so called paulista race / Mestre

Concentrating on six representative media sites, 28 Days Later (2002), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Land of the Dead (2005), Children of Men (2007), Snowpiercer (2013), and one television series The Walking Dead (2010-present), this dissertation examines the strain of post-millennial apocalyptic media emphasizing a neo-liberal form of collaboration as the path to survival. Unlike traditional collaboration, the neo-liberal construction centers on the individual’s responsibility in maintaining harmony through intra-group homogeny. Through close textual analysis, critical race theory, and feminist media studies, this project seeks to understand how post-racial and post-feminist representational strategies elide inequality and ignore tensions surrounding racial or gender differences to create harmony-through-homogeny in popular apocalyptic film and television.

The research herein presents an analysis of the evolution of José Martí’s racial thought throughout his written work. The principle focus of this investigation is to establish a comprehensive understanding of Martí’s racial ideas and to explain how the author developed the anti-racist principles demonstrated in his final years of life. The thesis proposes that José Martí’s ideas regarding race relations were shaped through a gradual process defined by his experiences of exile. To illustrate this position, I present a chronological mapping of his political and racial ideas, ranging from his early writings as a youth (1869), when he established his anti-colonial position against Spain, stretching forward through the end of his life, when Martí’s staunch position against racism was most visible in the context of his writings (1892-1895) in preparation for the war of Cuban independence. This research also reflects on how the Cuban author’s use of race and racism functioned as a principle node to address and promote change concerning political and social contradictions then present in Cuba, Hispanic America and the United States. To understand the process of the construction of José Martí’s racial position, texts he published during his stay in countries with a large indigenous presence, such as Mexico and Guatemala (1875-1878), are analysed. Additionally, the articles, essays and chronicles written by the author on the subject of race during his fifteen-year stay in the United States (1880-1895) are examined, as racial conflict was a prominent issue in political and national debates of the time. The thesis also focuses on the period of organisation and political activism when Martí presented his model for Cuba as a patria libre, defined by the heightened participation of Blacks and mullatos. My examination also focuses on Martí’s 1891 proposal to adopt mestizaje as a regional identity, taking into account the ideological environment of the late eighteen hundreds, which was dominated by Positivism and Liberalism in Hispanic American governments and by economic expansionism in the United States. This study thus provides an approach to understanding the development of José Martí’s racial thinking over the course of his lifetime, demonstrating how his racial ideas were defined and influenced by national and regional contexts, as well as by dominant ideologies, and proposes that Martí’s views regarding race came about as a result of the author’s intellectual and experiential progression, as opposed to being the result of a lifelong anti-colonial stance.

This study explores how the representation of the drug-addict in Hollywood cinema has changed due to governmental and studio policy change, social shifts of opinion, and economic structure. This discussion and exploration primarily focuses upon narrative Hollywood film as this industry has a long and varied history of addiction films. While there have been a variety of shifts in the depiction of drug-addiction due to social changes and industry regulation, perhaps at no other time in cinema history has the culmination of economics, politics, and independent art had such a large impact on the depiction of addiction than in the 1970s. This defining decade did more than alter the social perspective on drug usage; it set the stage for a drastic alteration in the perception of drug-addiction that occurred in the decades to follow. The Seventies were filled with social upheaval and a powerful youth movement that altered the representation greatly. This study discusses three types of drug-addiction representation and the social, political, and economic context in which they reflect and influence. While the social importance placed upon cinema is not questioned in this investigation, the techniques of representation of the addict in film are explored. I examine three characterizations in the addiction films of the 1970s. These phases include, but are not limited to representations of African-Americans, war veterans, and narcissists as drug-addicts in American cinema. I propose that the representation of the addict has shifted due more to sociological impacts rather than an audience-centered and message driven approach. Expounding further, I argue that the sociological impacts, such as federal legislation, are more impacting on the representation of the drug-addict in film rather than a decisive message about addiction for the benefit of the audience. The political-economic, cultural dynamic also plays a significant role in the development of such representation

This dissertation examines my regional identity-in-context. First, I frame opening questions related to space, race, landscape, and identity, using the metaphor of walking. Secondly, I outline my notion of "mixed methods" for the study, which I call "a moving methodological mestizaje." Third, I weave personal narrative and poetry to I examine what it means to come to racial consciousness as a biracial, mixed-race person of color in the Midwest-South. Reflecting on the geographic and cultural features of Southern Illinois, I come to understand the region of the country as a "borderlands." Following Gloria Anzaldúa's writing, I identify myself as "a mestizo," or person of mixed race ancestry, but in the context of the Southern Illinois. The title poem of the dissertation expands on "mulatez" or African mestizaje to articulate an Afro-Latino political alliance. Fourth, I explore multiple space that I have lived across the country, to examine qualities of Whiteness to ultimately work against White identity. Then, I deploy the metaphor of drinking hot sauce as a reclaiming Mexican, Aztec mythopoetic. I come to name myself as "Merry Midwest Mestizo," to fully embrace my biracial, Latino, and White self and to find my identity-in-context. Finally, I offer a reclamation of my Mexican mother's life and death using Gloria Anzaldúa's notion of "autohistoria." I close with further ramifications of the study.

Rural high school students are much less likely to choose higher education than their urban or suburban peers as their post high school choice. This research examines the process of choice of four rural high school graduates and their lived realities through this transition. From the four interviews conducted reoccurring themes of strong community `kinship,' high support level in school, and low parental attainment immerged. These themes highlight a sacrifice of individual identity for a collective community identity and social context in which fears of difference (race and class) underlie the rejection of foreign experiences. Low parental attainment shifts the cultural capital to peers or teachers while limited ranges of employability further gender and divide post high school choice.

This study explores whiteness through a rhetorical analysis of the language used in a speech made at a Red October campaign rally in South Africa in October, 2013. The Red October campaign positions white South Africans as an oppressed minority group in the country, and this study looks at linguistic choices and devices used to construct a white victim identity in post-apartheid South Africa. This thesis considers gender, religion, race, culture, class and ethnicity as intersections that contribute to the discursive construction of whiteness in the new South Africa. Ultimately, the study gives us a better understanding of whiteness, and particularly whiteness in South Africa, and the importance of language and power in certain political, social and cultural contexts.

In this dissertation I argue that despite the liberatory promises of mid-century American social justice movements, women's literature in the late 20th and early 21st centuries treats motherhood as a dystopic and economically marginalized subject position. In genres as disparate as science fiction and gang narrative, authors Octavia Butler, Yxta Maya Murray and Suzanne Collins engage problematic ideologies of maternal love, asserting, through their renderings of fictional maternal characters, that mothers are powerless in contemporary society. This pessimism contrasts with the view of woman of color (WOC) feminist writers of the 1980s, who participated in social justice movements by asserting their own politics and including mothers in their liberatory vision. Audre Lorde's biomythography Zami (1982) is emblematic of their optimism, which imagines a regenerative possibility for mothers. I begin this dissertation with an exploration of Zami in order to ask how and why later texts appear to unwrite this transformative potential of the maternal as envisioned by earlier WOC feminists. Thus, Lorde serves as a lens through which I examine the increasingly despairing attitude of women writers toward the maternal. I argue that the shared focus on the maternal among such dissimilar writers demonstrates that in American women's writing, mothers are a crucial literary subject across sexual, gendered, racial and ethnic lines. By drawing on critical race theory, WOC feminism, queer theory, and maternal theory to examine interlocking formal and thematic elements--unreliable narrators who sanctify motherhood, reworking of the sentimental, the ironic use of both saintly and devouring mothers--I expose writers' dystopic reworking of the meanings of motherhood. The breadth of texts I read prompts an interdisciplinary approach, with close attention to socio-historical context; thus reading Butler's ironic black superwoman in Lilith's Brood gains coherence when placed in the light of 1960s Black Nationalism, which traded on the trope of a Black Matriarch in order to blame women for black social ills. I argue that maternal oppression is essential to the nature of women's identity in contemporary American women's literature, wherein being human for women includes the expectation to be a mother, in often brutally oppressive contexts. / 10000-01-01

Racial identity formation has been extensively studied but lacks an adequate accounting of one of the dominant forms of modern communication: social media interactions. Existing literature acknowledges an implicit and complex relationship between various forms of communication and racial identity formation. Nevertheless, the role of online interactions, and how they affect the development of multi-layered and complex identities, remains largely underexplored. This dissertation explores how the Internet, and its related technologies, provide new forms of communications that facilitate the formation, negotiation, and presentation of racial identity for African American young adults in college. By examining the intersection of communications research and race and ethnicity scholarship, I reveal new mechanisms for racial identity formation, explain how social media interactions moderate existing identity formation processes, and shed light upon new sites where existing processes are enacted. All of these outcomes provide new insight into how the process of identity formation unfolds for black Americans in the “information age.”