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Efforts to effectively combat discrimination require an understanding of how groups in power think about those experiencing prejudice and discrimination. To study how White individuals think about the discrimination faced by different racial groups (Non-Hispanic White, Black, Asian, Middle Eastern, Native and Indigenous, Latinx and Hispanic, and Mixed-Race men and women), 304 White participants completed an edited version of the Everyday Discrimination Scale and the Hypervigilance scale for each of these 14 groups to assess participants’ perceptions that these targets experience discrimination. Further, explicit attitudes towards each group were assessed with feelings thermometers. Results of our within subjects ANOVAs found that all racial groups were perceived to experience different levels of discrimination from one another, with Black targets perceived as experiencing the most discrimination and White targets the least. When analyzing intersectionally, we found Black men were perceived as experiencing the most discrimination, followed by Black women, White men perceived as experiencing the least discrimination with White women the second lowest group. Additionally, Asian women and Hispanic Latino men were perceived as facing more than their same race counterparts. Overall, these data indicate that White individuals perceive differences in the group levels of discrimination faced by racial-gender groups, and highlights the importance of an intersectional approach when studying race and gender discrimination.

The thesis examines how ethnography museums, in inventing and reinforcing the desire for modernity through their exhibiting clout, have been representing Self and the Other via the nexus that connects issues of identity, race, and difference. Based on research conducted using textual analysis and interviews to museum visitors, the thesis examines whether modern ethnography museums are moving past their colonial frameworks and managing to integrate the voices and experiences of the post-colonial Other through the lenses of heritage, history, and memory.

<p>From what <em>specific </em>socio-cultural “positionality” are African-Canadian Muslim females living their realities? What methods do they employ to locate, (re)claim, and/or assert selfhood from these peripheral spaces within the white nation? How does their shared socio-religio-racial and gendered marginality, potentially, act as a site for inciting a sense of camaraderie towards one another? Such queries frame the content of this thesis which commissions qualitative research methods to unearth answers that rely upon the “particular”--by intimately gazing at 13 Black Muslim women’s gendered-racialized experiences in Toronto. Dividing analysis by religious status this work examines the dynamics distinct to 1. convert and 2.“life-long” Muslim participants’ cultivation of a religious/racial identity. The anti-Black <em>and</em> anti-Islamic discrimination punctuating “multicultural” Canada later collapses investigation into a unified survey of the ways African-Canadian Muslim women in general, contend with the oppressive socio-cultural forces attempting to infringe on their humanity. Research concludes that the adverse <em>or</em> hospitable responses of surrounding communities (these are: the ethnic-majority Muslim community; the non-Muslim Black population; Eurocentric secular society at large) to these women, influences how they both place themselves in their environments <em>and </em>interact with their Black-Muslim female fellows. This thesis argues that the persistent ostrasization of African-Canadian Islamic women within the religious and secular-public spheres of society establishes a necessary, defensive solidarity amongst these individuals; specifically, their communions can erect a nurturing platform to challenge or minimize the impact of oppressive forces--particularly protecting against the mental and social violence inflicted by <em>racist-sexist Islamophobic white supremacist powers</em>.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)

Cette thèse traite de l’aide qu’apporte le renseignement à la prise de décision pour les pouvoirs politiques en place, de la période précoloniale à la période postcoloniale. La chronologie nous a conduit à étudier le renseignement, son infrastructure et son personnel pendant la période précoloniale, puis le renseignement pendant la période coloniale, que ce soit de la conquête à l’installation administrative française. Après l’indépendance, le service de renseignement a perduré en se restructurant, mais en conservant des liens avec l’ancienne puissance coloniale. Ce travail sur le long terme a fait apparaitre une large continuité dans le temps et des dynamiques d’adaptation entre les différentes périodes. Les informateurs traditionnels ont continué d’alimenter aussi bien les pouvoirs locaux, les pouvoirs coloniaux que postcoloniaux. (Ils constituent en quelque sorte les « soutiers » du renseignement). Plus que de ruptures, cette étude met en évidence de très larges continuités entre le passé et le présent. / The subject deals with the contribution that intelligence made to decision making by the political powers from the precolonial period to the postcolonial period. The chronology has lead us to examine the intelligence service, its infrastucture and its staff during the precolonial period, followed by intelligence during the colonial period, from conquest to the setting up of the French administration. Following independence, intelligence services continued to exist by restructuring themselves, while at the same time maintaining links with the old colonial powers. This long term study has revealed a broad continuity in time and the dynamics of adaptation between the different periods. The traditional informants continued to supply local and colonial powers as well as postcolonial powers. (In a way they constituted the firemen of the “furnace of information”). More than a departure, this study brings to light the very broad continuity between the past and the present.

In The Song of the Lark (1915), Willa Cather does something extraordinary by presenting a well-rounded and likeable Mexican character. This is quite different from her contemporaries’ stereotypical depictions of minorities. To include immigrants in a modern novel was avant-garde and radical subject matter; and presenting a realistic, likeable Mexican character was unheard of because the colonized and immigrants were largely ignored in American literature, or deliberately overlooked. When they were included, persistent demeaning views and unflattering Mexican stereotypes were the norm. This paper seeks to explain how positively Cather depicts Mexican characters, decades before Civil Rights. Cather includes the plight of Mexicans in her novel and gives voice to those that were silenced and ignored. Even though she was a bestselling author and considered one of the best American writers of the era, she has not been properly credited for how progressive she was in her treatment of minorities. It is well documented that Cather used juxtaposition and absences in her writing to convey meaning; I build on these absences to add in rhetorical silence and connect her use of silence to the academic conversation about speech in post-colonial analyses. By contextualizing her writings within the period, I demonstrate how progressive her novels are. Even though most depictions of minorities at the turn of the century were stereotypical, Cather diverges from the racism, which makes her decades ahead of her contemporaries in including good immigrants and minorities in American literature.

La thèse porte sur les migrations de travailleurs indonésiens vers Kuala Lumpur, en Malaysia, et Singapour, à partir d’une approche qui s’efforce de combiner les principes de l’analyse pragmatiste et la prise en charge des effets de structure, en vue de décrire la formation de transnationalismes dans la région et d’interroger la nature des espaces sociaux qui s’agrègent autour de ces parcours migratoires. En développant une approche socio-anthropologique mise en œuvre au cours de vingt mois de terrain il s’est agi de saisir la migration au plus proche des expériences vécues, sans renoncer à décrire des contextes sociaux, politiques, culturels et historiques qui permettent de les situer dans leurs spécificités mais aussi dans la perspective de dynamiques politiques et économiques globales. Alors que ces migrations se développent et s’institutionnalisent, le choix d’une ethnographie multi-site, dispersée dans les trois pays, a permis de construire un point de vue mobile et décentré, au plus près des expériences situées. Dans cette perspective, la thèse s’efforce de montrer l’émergence de transnationalismes et d’espaces transnationaux à l’intersection entre la production d’un travail globalisé et les politiques nationales, où s’inscrivent des processus de subjectivation inédits. Alors que les socialités se désenclavent sous l’effet des migrations, les espaces vécus se transnationalisent en sorte que saisir ces nouvelles dynamiques sociales, c’est désormais aussi décrire des manières d’habiter le transnational. / The thesis deals with the migration of Indonesian workers to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and Singapore. The argument draws on a theoretical approach which attempts to blend the contribution of pragmatism with the analysis of structure effects in order to describe the formation of transnationalisms in the region and to scrutinize the nature of the social spaces which are assembled along these migration trails. By constructing a socio-antrhopological approach, operationalized during a twenty-months fieldwork, we aimed to capture migration as close as possible from lived experiences, yet without giving up the description of the broader social, political, cultural and historical contexts which allow to remain sensitive to their specificities while locating them in the context of global political and economic dynamics. While these migrations are both developing and being increasingly institutionalized, the choice of a multi-sited ethnography, distributed in the three countries, allowed to build a shifting and de-centered point of view, and to remain always as close as possible to situated experiences. In this perspective, the thesis tries to show the emergence of transnationalisms and transnational social spaces at the intersection between the production of a globalized labor and national politics – space politics -, where new subjectivation processes are being shaped. While socialities are increasingly disembbedded from local contexts, lived spaces are also increasingly transnationalized, so that capturing these new social dynamics now supposes to describe new ways of inhabiting the transnational.

La représentation des aborigènes qu’elle soit due à des artistes aborigènes ou à un regard extérieur fait partie de la construction d’une identité, notamment lorsque l’acte de création est pensé comme un mode de transmission culturelle (afin de retrouver leurs esprits ancestraux), la première étape pour aborder les œuvres des artistes aborigènes consiste à multiplier les points de vue sur la question de l’identité culturelle (la dimension politique d’affirmation de soi) et à remettre en question leur intention d’être artiste. Le fait que l'artiste aborigène se pense comme artiste dénote déjà une tentative d’inscription dans un monde social non aborigène. Cette posture ne va cependant pas sans tensions. Après le tournant ethnographique (tournant contextuel et identitaire), l’artiste aborigène s’est obligé à réfléchir à son statut, à sa manière de créer et au pourquoi de ce choix de devenir un artiste. La voie choisie par les quatre artistes étudiés ici ne les a pas conduits à apprendre des choses (acte de construire ou se construire). Il s’agit plutôt d’un effort de désapprendre, afin d’exprimer la juxtaposition culturelle et la simultanéité de l’Autre dans un monde global et mobile. En conséquence, l’artiste en tant qu’aborigène-voyageur provoque un court-circuit des interprétations. Dans cette perspective, chaque présentation au musée noue une relation avec le visiteur ou le spectateur dans un espace temporaire ou parallèle à l’espace réel.Cette recherche s’appuie à la fois sur l’analyse de la situation socio-culturelle de quatre artistes aborigènes ( Rahic Talif, Walis Labai, Sapud Kacaw et Chang En-Man ), l’analyse esthétique de leurs oeuvres et l’analyse historique du contexte de production, de diffusion et d’exposition des œuvres aborigène en général entre 1895 et 2017. Elle tente de cerner une vision post-coloniale entre l’art et l’ethnographie et de développer une pratique de l’analyse qualitative bâtie sur trois questions fondamentales : comment les oeuvres des artistes aborigènes ont-elles été représentées et « encadrées » dans un discours identitaire ? Comment l’artiste aborigène met-il en lumière la traçabilité de son appartenance (comme identité traçable) à travers sa représentation ? Comment cette représentation introduit-elle un court-circuit des interprétations culturelles dans les modes de réception ? / The representation of the aborigines, whether due to aboriginal artists or based on an outside perspective, is an integral part of the construction of an identity, in particular when the act of creation is conceived as a mode of cultural transmission (in order to find their ancestral spirits). The first step to approaching the works of the aboriginal artists consists of multiplying points of view on the question of the cultural identity (the political dimension of self-affirmation) and the questioning of their intent to be considered an artist. The fact that the aboriginal artist regards himself as an artist, had already been attempted in the non-aboriginal community. However, this position has not been without controversy. After the ethnographical turn (contextual turn into specific identity), the aboriginal artist is obliged to think about his/her status, the way to create and the reason why (s)he would become an artist. The approach chosen by the four artists studied here has not led them to learn anything (act of construction or building of themselves) ; it is rather a question of unlearning, in order to associate with the cultural juxtaposition and the simultaneity of the others in the global and mobile world. Therefore, the artist as an aborigine-traveler causes a short-circuit in the interpretations. In this perspective, each presentation at the museum builds a relationship with the ‘visitor-viewer’ in a temporary or parallel space as it relates to the real space.This research is based at the same time on the analysis of the socio-cultural situation of the four artists (Rahic Talif, Walis Labai, Sapud Kacaw et Chang En-Man), the aesthetic analysis of their works and the historical analysis of the context of production, diffusion and exhibition of the aboriginal works in general between 1895 and 2017. By relying on a sociocultural and artistic representation, our research is designed to build a strategic vision for the post-colonial studies between art and ethnography. Developing a practice of the qualitative analysis, we wish to focus on three fundamental questions : How were the works of the aboriginal artists represented and « framed » in a control of identity discourse? How does the aboriginal artist consider the traceability of his/her feeling of belonging (like a trackable identity) through his/her representation? How does this representation introduce a short circuit of the cultural interpretations in the different modes of expression, perception, evolution and reception?

<p>This dissertation gives a number of answers to the following two research questions: given the storied nature of faith and displacement, what does literary studies have to offer church-based refugee activists in religious diasporas? And what might church-based activists, who are involved in daily struggles to interpret cultural, ethnic, and religious stories for the sake of cultural transformation, have to offer literary studies of displacement? The analysis of this thesis uses literary and cultural theory (diaspora studies, postcolonial theorizations of the exotic, discursive analysis, formalist textual examination, and more) to understand interethnic church-based refugee activism taking place within a specific religious diaspora, the Christian Reformed Church in Canada. The formation of diasporas and faith groups through shared allegiances to communal stories makes literary studies a fitting vantage point from which to examine a religious diaspora. Because religious diasporas have explicitly storied identities, their discourses are open to the potential of stories to effect communal change. Refugee novels and other cultural texts that are valued in diaspora and refugee studies can have a part in shaping the storied identity out of which church-based refugee activism is done, helping religious diasporas to more deeply understand the experiences specific to refugee-ed people and to more closely align their activism with the stated desires of refugee-ed people.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This thesis examines Indian author Raja Rao’s critically neglected work. I read Rao’s production as a strategic, yet problematic, negotiation of hegemonic narrativizations of Indian history, which attempts both to propose alternative histories and deconstruct the ontology of modern western historiography. Rao’s often criticised use of essentialism in his works is here examined as a strategic deconstructive tool in the hands of the postcolonial writer. More specifically, I wish to show how his early novels Kanthapura and Comrade Kirillov resist colonial depictions of India through both linguistic and cultural structures. Rao’s stylistic negotiation is effected through a use of the English language mediated by the Indian writer’s sensibility. Both novels enforce strategies working through opposition. They provide alternative accounts counterbalancing strategic absences in the records of colonial Indian historiography while attempting to recover the voice of protagonist subalterns. In my examination of his later novels The Serpent and the Rope, The Cat and Shakespeare and The Chessmaster and His Moves, I argue that a more effective strategy of intervention is at work. It attempts to disrupt from within the discursive features of post-Enlightenment European modernity, more specifically the premises of Cartesian oppositional dualities, homogeneous ideas of linear time, and the centrality of imperial spaces, while problematising the hybrid and heterogeneous character of Rao’s narrative.