Frontier Internship in Mission (FIM) was an experimental mission project conceived of and run by Presbyterian Student World Relations director Margaret Flory between 1961 and 1974. It was broadly ecumenical in concept and execution and closely tied to the World Student Christian Federation community. Recent college or seminary graduates were assigned to live and work with local people who were connected in some way to the global ecumenical network and who had invited them. They worked on projects mutually agreed upon, usually for two years. One hundred fourteen of the 140 Americans who originally participated and eight of the original 20 international participants were interviewed for this study. Their narratives about their life histories and experience during and after these international partnerships offer an intimate look at one group of largely mainline Protestant Americans born in the 1930s and 1940s, and the social and religious institutions that were their avenues to engagement with the wider world at a time of cataclysmic change. Over the thirteen years of FIM program operation considered here, conditions in the forty-eight different countries where Frontier Interns (FIs) served were transformed by movements for independence and by escalating covert and overt American intrusions. The core of this dissertation presents regionally-organized internship case studies highlighting the impact of those encounters on the FI’s Christian and American identities . It also analyzes the rejection of their witness when they returned home. Moving forward with their lives, Frontier Interns reaffirmed their commitment to “right relations” of mutual respect across difference and most often gravitated to social roles as bridge-builders and interpreters, domestically and internationally. The strong internal opposition to global ecumenism that had developed in some mainline Protestant churches changed the relationship of many FIs to those churches. It is argued here that the Frontier Interns’ experience highlights a societal shift from a moral order based on covenant or social contract to one that privileged the unrestrained exercise of power and interests. A covenantal commitment to mutual global partnerships is central to who the FIs are, their internships, and what they did with their lives subsequently.

The issue of reconstruction has appealed to many nations that have moved from significant transitional periods, be it economic, social, and or political. This has made the reconstruction theology, a relevant theology. This study is a result of realities unfolding in Zimbabwe which left many to ask what is missing in Zimbabwe in order to have a better society. The study seeks to contribute to the reconstruction theology debate from a missiological perspective which is based on asking and answering the question, “what is the role of the Christian Church in reconstruction?” At the onset, the study seeks to assert the applicability of the Ezra - Nehemiah Motif in Zimbabwe. The research is motivated by the premise that the church ought to have the capacity to adequately formulate a public-social theology which meets the demands of society. It is on this basis that the research will grapple with the concerns for justice, aspects of difference in relationship to human life- human dignity, policies of democratisation and democracy, social development and societal peaceful coexistence. The theology of reconstruction has been argued as a praxis and deed-oriented model of rebuilding. Whilst appreciating the Liberation Theology and its value to Zimbabwe, it could be argued further that the liberation has served the purpose and the need for a complementary theology; - Reconstruction Theology. However, if this assertion is to be upheld, questions may be raised as to whether Reconstruction Theology seeks to replace Liberation Theology. It is therefore through this research that it can be established whether there is a replacement of or a complement of liberation theology with reconstruction theology. This research then aims to analyse the deplorable Zimbabwean, socio-economic and socio-political fibers that require reconstruction and transformation, to enable development of a better society in which human dignity is respected. Further to that, the research explores and reflects upon the theological and missiological models of reconstruction that could be considered in post-colonial Zimbabwe. It is in this research that some alternative cultural variables, which could help achieve national reconstruction are deconstructed in light of reconstruction of Zimbabwe. To achieve this research utilises African Renaissance as its theoretical framework and informed by social construction theory. This research engages in the quantitative and qualitative research methods, supported by interviews and questionnaires. There is a plethora of produced in published and unpublished literature that enriched this thesis. Furthermore, the research utilised various methodological approaches which includes theological, sociological, and post-colonial. The research will then comprise nine chapters subtitled depending on the matters of concern. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Science of Religion and Missiology / PhD / Unrestricted

Purpose. The purpose of this study was to identify the causes that result in Hispanic youth dropping out of high school prematurely. Procedures. A questionnaire was mailed to 150 California high school principals. In addition, 32 Hispanic students who dropped out during the 1984-85 school year were interviewed. Findings. High school principals identified low achievement, employment, lack of parental support and truancy as the major causes for Hispanic students dropping out of school. Students on the other hand, identified only truancy as the most influential cause for leaving high school during the 1984-85 school year. Significant differences among principals' perceptions of causes were noted by principals in an urban setting. They placed more importance on employment, peer pressure, poor reading skills, poor math skills and truancy than did principals in a suburban and rural setting. Additionally, principals with increasing Hispanic student enrollment differed from principals with declining Hispanic student enrollment by placing more importance on employment, low teacher expectation, poor reading skills and truancy. Identified causes relating to school completion or non-completion provide implications for programs which address the needs of potential dropouts. These programs should furnish intensive academic remediation, small class size with varied course offerings, and academic incentives. Additionally, flexible scheduled school-based programs which promote student ties to potential employers and provide Hispanic students equal opportunity are suggested. Finally, truancy should be addressed prior to students reaching high school. School districts concerned with the dropout problem should develop better methods in the identification of dropouts and study current employment programs and the extent to which they meet Hispanic student needs. Recommendations. (1) Replication of this study should be made to determine the differences between factors that cause male and female students to drop out of school. (2) A study focusing on specific truancy factors, including causes, local practices, and truancy intervention programs is highly recommended. (3) A study related to the effectiveness of utilizing truance coordinators is highly recommended. (4) A study focusing on the correlation between English proficiency and student dropout rates is highly recommended.

This dissertation comprises a critical edition of the Algerian author Maïssa Bey’s 2002 autofictional work in French, Entendez-vous dans les montagnes…, including: a translator’s introduction, a critical introduction, the translation, and an afterword. The translator’s introduction presents my translation methodology, which adapts Jacqueline Guillemin-Flescher’s theories in Syntaxe comparée du français et de l’anglais: problèmes de traduction (1981). I rework her communicative approach to convey the complexities of Franco-Algerian “coprésences,” or the coexistence of two cultures. I pose the question: Do readers need the same cultural capital to appreciate Entendez-vous dans les montagnes… as they do to read a standard French to English translation? This specificity explains my changes to Guillemin-Flescher’s theories. The critical introduction presents Entendez-vous dans les montagnes..., which stages an exiled Algerian woman’s physical journey through Provence to Marseilles. The three protagonists also metaphorically travel to understand their singular memories and the multiple truths behind the Franco-Algerian colonial legacy (1830-1962). I pinpoint the dualities in: the Algerian woman, a French Army veteran turned doctor, Jean, and Marie, the young granddaughter of a pied-noir. An analysis of their dualities, between conformity and rebellion, enhances the book’s political statements. I accent how a knowledge of Bey’s “traces” or multiple connotations of euphemisms, such as “soigner,” which means “to take care of the sick” or “to execute,” underscore these dualisms. Finally, I highlight Marie’s comparatively small role. The afterword presents how the translation process impacts Entendez-vous dans les montagnes…. I contemplate how to maintain the distinctiveness of Bey’s book, in which the figurative and literal senses of every French word communicate political and personal content. This style conveys politics in a simple, highly relatable fashion, partially due to the deep personal commitment underneath. Translation frames a text. It is a complex, rewarding challenge to provide this frame when the original exposes the volatile cultural politics behind the Franco-Algerian colonial legacy.

For the past 200 years, Latinos have comprised the largest, consistent category of immigrants in the United States. This influx has created a need for culturally competent psychological treatment of a population that suffers from acculturative stress, defined as the stress a minority member experiences while trying to adjust to the culture of the majority. Researchers have studied Latino immigrants' enduring trials as they adjust to life in the United States. Nevertheless, there is limited research on the quantification of factors contributing to acculturative stress. Based on the conceptual framework of bidimensional acculturation and Latina/o critical race theory, predictors of acculturative stress among Latino immigrants (N = 172) were examined in this quantitative cross-sectional study. Data were collected using a convenience sample from several public areas located in Miami, Florida. Forced entry regression analysis weighed factors such as: documentation status, experiencing prejudice, gender, income, the number of family members present, confidence in English, age, and number of years in the United States. The results demonstrated only experienced prejudice weighed significantly in the regression model (β = .43, p < .05), and was therefore correlated with acculturative stress scores. The results of this study may help to increase mental health professionals' awareness of how experiences of discrimination can impact the acculturative stress of their immigrant clients. To improve service to this community, mental health professionals and their institutions can take steps to counteract the biases associated with the acculturative stress of Latino immigrants, thereby establishing themselves as an ally to this population.

Kanakas, Owhyees, Blue Men, were all names given to laborers from Hawaii, or the Sandwich Islands, who contributed significantly to the economic, cultural, and political history of the United States territory west of the Mississippi River in the period 1750-1900. The Sandwich Islands first entered the international economic scene in the latter eighteenth century when its excellent ports and favorable climate made the Islands an ideal winter harbor and stopover for merchant ships, whalers, and explorers' vessels who needed to replenish food and water supplies, or make necessary repairs. Just as frequently the crews of these vessels needed to be supplemented, and the Kanakas were eager to travel and to receive wages paid to seamen. Kanaka seamen sailed with William Douglas, Robert Gray and George Vancouver; and as seamen and land based laborers for the North West Company, Astor's expedition, the Russian-American Company, Hudson's Bay Company, and Nathaniel Wyeth's Columbia River Fur and Trading Company. In 1834 the first American missionaries arrived in the Northwest, and they immediately made demands on the Islanders for labor supply. Both the Methodists and the ABCFM missionaries hired Kanakas for building, kitchen chores, farm labor, blacksmithing, and as herders. When the Oregon country began to attract annual emigrations from the East, the Kanakas found their skills also in demand by these new settlers. They were hired to work in the sawmills or as farm and house servants. Their seamanship opened doors all over the world for them, and involved the Islanders in various foreign intrigues. In Japan they were among deserters imprisoned and mistreated by the Oriental isolationists. During the American Civil War many were taken prisoner by Confederate ships. They also played a role in the movement to improve the lot of sailors by appearing before the British admiralty courts seeking redress for poor treatment aboard British ships. Those Kanakas who remained on the American mainland wanted to become citizens of the United States with their white neighbors. Their petition to the territorial government of Oregon, however, was refused. Restrictions were placed upon their continued immigration into the Northwest area, they were ignored by the 1849 Oregon census, the U.S. Consul in California received instructions from the Secretary of State barring the Kanakas from assistance or protection in California ports, and a long verbal battle ensued in the U.S. Congress over excluding them from the Donation Land Act. But the Kanakas were still recognized as excellent seamen and this occupation took them north to Kamchatka and south to California, Mexico, and around the tip of South America to ports of the eastern U.S. Those who left the sea worked in California gold fields, preached to Digger Indians, became part of the Mormon movement in Utah, or continued to serve the Hudson's Bay Company, Puget's Sound Agricultural Company, and the Russian-American Company. Throughout their historical journey in western America, they remained loyal, inconspicuous, and hardworking. But they also had dark skins and were foreign in origin. Once they threatened white superiority and white acquisition of land titles they became the targets of discrimination. They were not slaves so they could not be emancipated, but the white, Protestant ruling hierarchy could not allow them to become citizens and thereby free to settle land and demand the protection of American laws. They therefore found themselves classed with the Negro, Chinese, and Indians as undesirable elements in America's 'Manifest Destiny.' By 1900 most Kanakas had chosen to return to their homeland rather than recede into the shadows of American life, but their contributions to western American deserve recognition.

This dissertation stands at the intersection between human rights, contemporary postcolonial literature, and medieval folkloric texts, specifically the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Nights, by an unknown author. The Nights was first translated to French by Antoine Galland, when it appeared as a series from 1704 to 1715. This was followed by subsequent English translations and other translations into many other languages. Today, the Nights continues to captivate the world’s literary imagination. The dissertation focuses on selected popular textual and visual human rights narratives published from 1994 to 2014. These narratives are by celebrated human rights artists and authors from different parts of the globe: they are both non-Western and Western, but all have spent a significant portion of their personal lives and careers preoccupied by rights and social justice issues, both locally and universally. I focus on the following texts: Dreams of Trespass: Tales of A Harem Girlhood (1994) by Moroccan author and feminist Fatima Mernissi; Women Without Men (2009) by the exiled Iranian artist and director Shirin Neshat; Women Without Men by exiled and celebrated Iranian novelist called Shahrnush Parispur; Habibi (2011) by novelist Craig Thompson; and The Dream of Shahrazad (2014) by Emmy-Award-winning South African documentary film maker/director François Verster. The varied texts tackle human rights issues such as colonization, wars, human trafficking, rape, violence, torture, women’s subjection, environmental justice; freedom of speech and movement; forms of classism; and racism. I attempt to explore how and why these works are employing the Nights’ narrative model, as well as its formal and aesthetic aspects, to enable modern human rights narratives. While the direct connection to the Nights is obvious, I also trace obscure references to the Nights’ stories, genres, and themes. I focus on how “The Story of King Shahryar and Shahrazad” and its plot about storytelling to heal and save lives interplays with a modern sense of rights issues such as violence, genocide, trauma, healing, and legal appeals for justice. I offer a reading of the Nights’ stories referenced in each work to theorize why human rights artists and authors include them directly or obscurely within their narratives. I conclude that these stories from the Nights were chosen for their themes of social justice, discrimination, trauma, torture, judicial discourse, and feminist empowerment. I also conclude that contemporary human rights artists and authors incorporate elements from the Nights in intertextual ways that enable them to construct currently applicable allegories of human rights advocacy.

Levando em consideração um processo histórico (a colonização) e um sistema (o colonialismo), este trabalho explora a problemática da literatura colonial portuguesa em Angola na década de 1920. Quanto à estrutura, o estudo apresenta quatro capítulos: em primeiro lugar, tecemos um enquadramento teórico do colonialismo, da literatura colonial (em geral), da literatura colonial portuguesa (em particular) e da formação da literatura nacional angolana; essas considerações iniciais intentam sistematizar algumas formulações indispensáveis para se entender o fenômeno colonial, bem como apresentar um apanhado geral da história literária angolana, a fim de reconhecer a relevância das obras de autores portugueses para a construção desta outra literatura nacional. Em seguida, considerando que sem conhecer o contexto histórico é impossível compreender a literatura colonial da década de 1920 em sua plenitude, trazemos uma descrição da situação política entre Portugal e Angola e discutimos o surgimento da Agência Geral das Colónias, além de explorar a criação dos concursos de literatura colonial e introduzir as três obras selecionadas para a análise subsequente: África Portentosa, de Gastão Sousa Dias; África Misteriosa, de Julião Quintinha; e Em terra de pretos, de Henrique Galvão. Para os capítulos três e quatro, porém, foram escolhidos dois eixos temáticos mais específicos – a questão da representação do africano e a questão de gênero, respectivamente – que nos permitem verificar como as obras eleitas para pesquisa constituem um conjunto de referências que ajudam compreender algumas das singularidades do colonialismo português em Angola.

This paper focuses on how identity and racial ideology are factored into displays in the exhibit, Fossil Fragments: The Riddle of Human Origins, at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. I used visitor questionnaires, observations, exhibition construction and curatorial interviews to examine that the concept of race is so ingrained in our society racial ideology and identity is automatically embedded in exhibits about human evolution. How may the exhibition inform the visitors’ perception of race and human evolution? A key aspect investigated was if the curatorial staff was conscious or unconscious about the racial ideological information present in the exhibit. By examining the exhibition construction and visitor observations, I was able to see aspects of the exhibit reinforced visitor racial ideological beliefs. In seeing how exhibition construction coupled with the legitimacy and power of the museum effect people’s thoughts on human evolution, helped me understand that not only information in the museum but information left out can be as detrimental. All the information allowed me to form recommendations change the exhibit so that identity and racial ideological information would no longer be present.

Thesis (M.A. (English Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2020 / This mini dissertation examines the influence of the Black Consciousness Philosophy on Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali’s Post-Colonial protest poetry. This is done in the form of analysing selected poems to highlight the influence that the Black Consciousness Philosophy had on the poems that Mtshali wrote about the experiences of black people under a suppressive apartheid system. The aim of this study was to explore how Mtshali’s poetry exposed the extent to which black people had been socio-economically deprived and misled to a negative and false belief of their inferiority and subservience. The title of the mini dissertation, suggests that Black Consciousness poetry claims to have had an influence on the protest poetry of Oswald Mtshali. The poems were analysed to ascertain this. The poems were examined with the express aim of identifying and understanding their themes and the socio-economic context from which they emanate.