This study addresses the challenges of developing the intercultural competency of global leaders within the context of the U.S. multinational corporation (U.S.M.C.). This research seeks to examine how organizations develop managers capable of leading in a pluralistic work environment and the implications of this kind of learning on the current assumptions held by intercultural academia and the business community. The research approach was interdisciplinary: combining adult learning theory (self-directed and transformational learning), international business communication and leadership, systems thinking, organizational development and learning, and intercultural theory. The following questions were addressed: How is cultural competence developed, supported, and integrated by the U.S. multinational organization? What challenges and obstacles do organizations face in effectively developing globally competent leaders? How can the intercultural academic community help to facilitate cultural competency development in the organizational context? The study found that, although global leadership competency is largely undefined in organizations, the mandate "to be global" is pervasive. In spite of this, culture in the organizational context and its impact on leadership development and performance are not widely understood in U.S.M.C.s. Yet, the study also found that most organizations do not have programs of any kind that promote intercultural competency development. Reasons for this discrepancy centered mostly on lack of awareness and support at the highest levels in organizations, business cost justification, and the lack of collaboration among (corporate) departments as well as between organizations and the intercultural academic community. Two data sets were used to complete this research. The first set included members of the corporate business units of Learning and Development.(L&D), Human Resources (HR), and Diversity. The second data set was comprised of interculturalists who hailed from the academic community, the business community, or both.

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare the cultural heritage work within the four municipalities in northern Värmland, and to see what motivates the preservation of sites classified as cultural heritage. The scientific method used in this essay is a qualitative descriptive idea analysis. The result of this essay has concluded that the northern municipalities in Värmland follow a set of rules and laws set by the Swedish governments appointed authority in the cultural district. But besides thet there is no cooperation or similar strategies between the municipality´s. The motives behind cultural heritage work are to strengthen the municipality´s growth both culturally and economically. This is done through heavy marketing of the different cultural heritage sites in the respective municipality to increase tourism, which leads to greater economic gains and puts the municipality´s on the map.

Danmei fandom is a subcultural community of young women in China. In the context of strict online censorship in China, they engage in the practices of writing, sharing, and reading Danmei fanfic, which is fan secondary works that focuses on the romantic relationship between male characters in media content and popular culture productions. This thesis proposes three research questions: 1) What kind of gendered exploration do female fans do through their participation in the reading and writing of Danmei fanfic? 2) How do fans engage in communication in the Danmei fandom online community? and 3) How do fans’ understanding of censorship guide their practices of circumventing censorship? This thesis uses textual poachers, subculture theory, and heterotopia theory to construct a theoretical framework to explore the subcultural practices of female Danmei fans and the tensions between Danmei subculture and mainstream ideology. To better understand Danmei fandom in a specific context, this project adopted the qualitative research methods of in-depth interviews and netnography to collect empirical data. This research discovers that Danmei fanfic can be a tool for female empowerment, providing a space for women to freely explore their sexuality and challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes. This creative space offers an alternative perspective that diverges from mainstream values and norms, allowing for resistance against dominant ideologies. However, Danmei fandom is connected to mainstream society in a broader ideological sense and reproduces hegemonic discourses and systems to some extent. Additionally, Danmei fandom not only makes diverse gender explorations, but also shows resistance to authoritarian censorship. By imagining the procedures and standards of censorship, they develop collective media use strategies and symbolic meaning systems to circumvent censorship. This thesis focuses on Chinese women’s daily leisure activities to understand female youth subcultures in Chinese contexts and broaden the understanding of slash fanfic in non-Western as well as non-English contexts.

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<p>This dissertation argues that humour not only constitutes a central aesthetic strategy within contemporary mass media, but can also be understood as a form of cultural production that is central to how we understand our world as a site of value and politics. Drawing on an understanding of liberalism as a politics of “reasonable dissent,” I investigate how humour is thought to operate as an exemplary form of this politics through a consideration of popular and scholarly literature. I then complicate this theoretical and lay consensus regarding humour-as-dissent, through a consideration of the ways in which a range of specific filmic and televisual texts – <em>Jackass</em>, <em>The Office</em>, <em>The Sarah Silverman Program</em>, <em>The Chappelle Show</em>, <em>The Simpsons</em>, <em>South Park</em>, <em>Family Guy</em>, <em>The Daily Show with Jon Stewart</em>, <em>The Colbert Report </em>and <em>Four Lions</em> – produce an aesthetic of humour through the manipulation and mobilisation of textual strategies and affective registers, such as discomfort, absurdity and provocation. Questioning the easy understanding of humour as a means to challenge existing power structures, I instead argue that the currently dominant forms of media humour are better understood as a political aesthetic that opens up new avenues of understanding and critique even as it shuts down and short circuits previously tenable forms of political interpretation. Through an intertwining of close-reading of popular cultural texts and a critical engagement with wider theoretical models of media production and consumption, I thus propose that the aesthetic aspects of mass media, such as humour, can be understood as cultural precursors that inflect the ways in which we can imagine the problems and possibilities of contemporary politics.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Statistical data on community colleges confirms how vast the community college institution is: Serving 46% of all undergraduates in the country, or 12.4 million students. A large body of literature exists on the specifics of social reproduction in four-year universities; as well as the specifics of social reproduction in racially and economically segregated high schools. However, there exists a blind spot in this literature when it comes to social reproduction at the community college. Through conducting interviews with students, faculty and staff at three local community colleges, this ethnographic study explores this theoretical and empirical blind spot by using a critical cultural studies perspective on social reproduction, asking questions around community college students’ experiences on three levels: students themselves, the institutional level through administration and governance; and, lastly, the communication strategy of the community college. Community colleges largely serve working class students, immigrants and older learners. They are the embodiment of the classic American dream that social mobility is possible through a democratic and public education system that allows anyone to ‘work their way up.’ On the other hand, they can work to funnel students too quickly into vocational tracks that foreclose the possibility of a higher-prestige, and higher-earning, bachelor’s degree. Community colleges straddle this tension between upward social mobility and class reproduction, as well as institutional tensions produced by needing to adapt to pervasive neoliberal logic. Student interviews highlight the ways their educational experiences are shaped by these tensions, given the community college’s unique structural education within higher education, and how these tensions can work to foreclose or open their future education possibilities. This thesis also explores the following themes: the community college’s positioning relative to public state schools and elite private schools; community college governance; workforce changes among faculty and staff and it’s effect on students; political implications of the community college education model; and, more broadly, understanding the place of public education in a wider neoliberal sociopolitical context.

Women's access to elective political office, an indicator of political inequality, was studied by surveying the percentage of women holding elective political positions in national legislatures of 74 countries. This study used a cross-sectional research design with multiple regression analysis.

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published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts