The history and significance of the black population in Argentina has only begun to be researched in earnest in the last four decades. This work will focus on mestizaje and blackness in Argentina, analyzing the experiences of Afro-Argentines in the nation-building process between 1870 and 1910. Particular focus will be given to how Afro-Argentines grappled with the âdisappearanceâ of their community in this same time period. Rather than unambiguous physical âdisappearanceâ of the Afro-Argentine caused by death in wars or epidemics, this work will explore the idea that the Afro-Argentine was also rapidly and thoroughly incorporated into a larger âArgentine race.â Using predominantly primary sources, this work will provide a more nuanced look at this aspect of the Afro-Argentine âdisappearance,â as well as the how ideas of blackness have filtered into contemporary Argentine culture.

Nawal Jaâ is a small town in Guatemala where a popular mode of water distribution is the community-based water organization (CBWO). This thesis will argue that a discourse of well-being rooted in the CBWO model as citizens of Nawal Jaâ participate in them propagates logic that evades any prior epidemiological or hydrological discourses, while neither settling into any other purely anthropological, biographical, or mythological discourses. Nine interviews were completed with twelve respondents taking part, which will be analyzed to show how competing discourses of global health and development and Kâicheâ Maya ways of being can both describe and yet fall short of the details these events of research present. Awareness of a new cultural logic model on well-being and its features will inform future endeavorsâ understandings of Nawal Jaâ as a site for itself a synthetic whole, without any prior global or local discourses or logics winning over others.

On January 19, 1972, the first cadre of the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) â a political-military organization that used guerrilla warfare to combat violent state repression during Guatemalaâs civil war â entered the Ixcán jungle in the mountains of El Quiché province. At the groupâs outset, it counted few women among its ranks; but by the end of its first ten years in operation, female membership had increased vastly. My thesis explores these guerrillerasâ lives and experiences from a gendered perspective. I argue that because their society was deeply patriarchal, facing sexist prejudices was a part of their daily existence; however, most did not join the EGP for specifically gendered reasons. Furthermore, during their armed activism, they continued to face sexism at times from their comrades and the communities with which they worked. However, they also attempted to change certain misogynistic attitudes and practices, as well as defied traditional gender roles through the revolutionary tasks they fulfilled. Overall, my thesis not only contributes to the existing scholarship on female insurgentsâ experiences, but it also serves as a building block for future comparative studies on the ways Latin American uprisings have been affected by, and have affected, womenâs oppression and rights.

No description available.

<p> Latin America is a region that has gone through and is still going through a lot of violent conflict. Both Mexico and Colombia have several similarities that stem from grand corruption. The vast systemic grand corruption is evidenced by the use of state violence, including massacres, other human rights violations, structural violence, the repression of the media, the repression of minorities, controversial land acquisitions, and the collusion of organized crime and the state, leading to state capture. The high levels of impunity, weak structures, and weak judicial systems have contributed to the continuation of systemic corruption and state violence. The research below explores the causal link between grand corruption, state capture, and state terror. It also explores the role of weak institutions, structural violence, and other factors that play an important role in 4 diverse case studies of state capture and state terror both in Mexico and Colombia.</p>

<p> The 1965 Immigration Act allowed a huge influx of new immigrants from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean, which extremely increased the levels of racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. society. Despite the fact that immigration from Europe to the U.S. has not stopped in this new era, the majority of research has focused on the labor market experiences of these nonwhite immigrants. New immigrant groups are also added to the white racial category as the U.S. Census Bureau started to refer "white&rdquo; to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. However, there is a shortage of academic research on the labor market experiences of these foreign-born non-Hispanic white immigrants, who differ in size, ethnic composition, socioeconomic background and geographic dispersion in the U.S. society. This research aims to fill this gap by examining whether or not earnings disparity exists between these immigrants and non-Hispanic US-born white Americans, and how much of this disparity is determined by the intersection of ethnicity and gender along with individual- and structural-level characteristics. </p><p> Applying multilevel regression models to the combined waves of data from the IPUMS and U.S. Census Bureau (1980&ndash;2010), the results show that earnings vary by ethnicity/gender, and there is significant earnings inequality between US-born white men and foreign-born white immigrants. Even more pronounced is significant gender earnings inequality within and between ethnic groups. Earnings gaps significantly vary across local labor markets, but much of the difference is determined by ethnicity/gender and individual-level predictors. Compared to temporal and regional context, local labor market context is not a major determinant of earnings achievement in the U.S. However, while the direct effects of local labor markets are trivial, they do have indirect effects on earnings through individual factors.</p>

<p>Drawing on local criminal court records in western and central South Carolina, this dissertation follows the legal experiences of black girls in South Carolina courts between 1885 and 1920, a time span that includes the aftermath of Reconstruction and the foundational years of Jim Crow. While scholars continue to debate the degree to which black children were included in evolving conversations about childhood and child protection, this dissertation argues that black girls were critical to turn-of-the century debates about all children's roles in society. Far from invisible in the courts and jails of their time, black girls found themselves in the crosshairs of varying forms of power --including intraracial community surveillance, burgeoning local government, Progressive reform initiatives and military policy -- particularly when it came to matters of sexuality and reproduction. Their presence in South Carolina courts established boundaries between early childhood, adolescence and womanhood and pushed legal stakeholders to consider the legal implication of age, race, and gender in criminal proceedings. Age had a complicated effect on black girls' legal encounters; very young black girls were often able to claim youth and escape harsher punishments, while courts often used judicial discretion to levy heavier sentences to adolescents and violent girl offenders. While courts helped to separate early childhood from the middle years, they also provided a space for African-American children and family to engage a legal system that was moving rapidly toward disenfranchising blacks.</p> / Dissertation

Paule Marshall has charged that the portrayal of the black woman in literature has been limited to stereotypes and fantasy figures, and that the writers of fiction have not presented the black woman as a complex and credible character. In her challenge to black writers to create such complex characters, Paule Marshall cites her own works as exemplary models of how the black woman should be portrayed. A careful examination of the black woman as a character in Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones, Soul Clap Hands and Sing and The Chosen Place, The Timeless People demonstrates that Paule Marshall provides in her fiction realistic representations of the black woman. In these works the black woman appears in a variety of plots, settings and conflicts which depicts the many dimensions of black womanhood. Paule Marshall captures the strengths and weaknesses of women struggling for survival, surmounting obstacles to realize goals, and searching for identity. Through a combination of diversified characterizations, Paule Marshall projects positive images of the black woman.

<p> This project argues that the National Park Service (NPS) functions as an agent of the state in perpetuating American imperialism throughout the Pacific World through presenting WWII narratives of sacrifice as worthy of inclusion into the nation. These narratives, I argue, reinforce American occupation in islands and regions that have contested relations to the nation. This project is informed by scholarship in rhetorical criticism of public memory and in American Studies analyses of the nation as an empire. Methodologically, I have combined fieldwork at each park site and official public interpretive materials, with historical archives related to the formation, design, and management of the parks to understand the relationship between past and present. Part I of this project examines War in the Pacific National Historical Park in the American territory of Guam and American Memorial Park in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. I focus my argument here on how NPS narratives of WWII cannot be separated from historical and contemporary American military interests in the Mariana Islands and the Pacific World. Part II approaches the three units of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument in Hawai&rsquo;i, Alaska, and California, with each state&rsquo;s focus, development, and accessibility being appreciably different. I argue that all are concerned with the legacies of militarized land use and narratives of sacrifice for and belonging to the nation.</p>

No description available.