Thesis advisor: María E. Brisk / Bilingual international students’ ability to function linguistically has been found to be closely associated with their academic performance (Karuppan & Barari, 2010; Rowntree, Zufferey, & King, 2016) and social adjustment (Andrade, 2006; Yeh & Inose, 2003). While most previous research has focused on the language and education experiences of graduate international students (e.g., Cheng & Erben, 2011; Jiang, 2014; Lin, 2006; Xue, 2013), it remains unclear how undergraduate students, especially newly-arrived college freshmen, function linguistically during their transnational, translingual, and transcultural experiences. Drawing upon Bioecological Model of Human Development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1985), this one-semester-long qualitative study explored the linguistic functioning and first-semester college experiences of twelve international freshmen from China. The guiding research questions were: (1) How did the twelve Chinese international students from different disciplines function linguistically in academic and social settings at the beginning of their first semester in college? (2) How did they meet the oral and written linguistic demands in academic and social settings throughout the semester? (3) What has changed regarding their linguistic functioning over the course of one semester? The participants were twelve first-semester Chinese international freshmen majoring in eight disciplines. Multi-modal data were collected through a combination of a 4-month digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2016) using a culturally-relevant social media application software WeChat, along with traditional qualitative data collection methods including semi-structured interviews, bilingual language logs, writing samples across genres, talks around texts, and informal communication. Three themes emerged based on data analyzed following applied thematic analysis (Guest, MacQueen, & Namey, 2012), including linguistic functioning in academic and social settings, the students’ coping strategies initiated, and their perceptions of support received. While the students’ previous language and education backgrounds played an important role in their ability to function linguistically in college, internal factors such as motivation and agency also helped to shape their first-semester college experiences. Although Chinese was frequently adopted as a bridging tool earlier in the semester, its popularity naturally decreased overtime throughout the semester. In questioning eight commonly held misconceptions, this dissertation has unpacked the within-group variability and tensions among Chinese international students and drawn attention to their initial transitional, translingual, and transcultural experiences from a developmental perspective. Based on the findings, I present (1) suggestions on how American higher education could better serve the unique linguistic and academic needs of its growing international student population to facilitate their long-term success, (2) implications on research methodology, and (3) directions for future research. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Little existing research examines how Vietnamese American individuals conceptualize wellness in relation to the community in which they live. Fewer studies examine the ways in which communities of Vietnamese expatriates form networks of support, based around community resources. Even fewer, if any, focus on these qualities within the context of Boston’s own Little Saigon – Fields Corner. This ethnography analyzes discussions with and observations of individuals living in a predominantly Vietnamese neighborhood in Boston who are a part of a support group for families of children with special needs. Through this analysis, two key themes emerge. First, through the learning of information and sharing of knowledge, this Network’s connections have impacts far beyond the four walls of their bi-weekly meeting space. Second, wellness for the parents in this group is directly tied to existing as a part of a community support network which allows them to successfully navigate three distinct institutions of care for their children – the medical and special education systems, as well as the expression of Vietnamese culture that exists in this neighborhood. I argue that in discussions with members of this support group, it is necessary to focus on channels alternative to biomedical mental health services when confronting the pursuit of a life worth living. This network acts as a site of social change through parental advocacy for their children’s flourishing within various institutions. Parents then act as vectors of consciousness to raise awareness for specific action. Within this context, parents are enabled to fight for their definition of a life worth living and their personal wellbeing.

abstract: Situated within seminal debates on the questions of liberation and justice viewed from the postcolonial context, this dissertation evaluates freedom narratives from both sides of the colonial divide during the period of high imperialism. Creating a transnational grouping of three diverse historical figures, E. M. Forster, M. K. Gandhi, and James Joyce, I argue for similarities in these writers’ narrative construction of “freedom” against colonial modernity. I argue that despite these writers’ widely disparate historical and cultural determinations, which uniquely particularize each of their freedom formulas as well as freedom “ideals” – the ideal of culture for Forster, renunciation for Gandhi and aesthetic apprehension for Joyce, these writers conceive of a commensurate/globally related form of “freedom” as postcoloniality and demonstrate cosmopolitan ambition. I also argue that the global form of postcoloniality they each practice can only be articulated through a close attention to each of their specific and local difference. The key contribution of the dissertation is to establish a new significance of the notion of fetishism for postcolonial studies, from both historical and theoretical perspectives. From a background that emphasizes the primacy of the concept of fetishism in its historical evolution within colonizing narratives of various Western discourses, especially fetish’s constitutive role in Enlightenment philosophy’s othering narrative of “primitive” natives, the work foregrounds a novel theoretical and narrative insight that the fetish demonstrates a unique potential to articulate/embody freedom as post-coloniality. Through a detailed critical analysis of each freedom narrative, I demonstrate how the clashes of particular contradictory cultural ideologies, in fact, determine each freedom narrative and how these contradictions are projected onto and galvanized by a fetish object(s). The work extends the ideas of Sigmund Freud, William Pietz, Homi Bhabha, Anne McClintock and Jacques Derrida on fetishism. Employing the framework of fetishism it brings into view similarities among the said three writers’ definition and practice of freedom. The work weighs in on critical debates between Marxist and Post-structural camps in postcolonial studies and proposes a new form of cosmopolitanism. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2017

While 95% of Indian SME leaders have not adopted an e-commerce platform, the few SME leaders having adopted such platforms reported 64% higher sales and 65% higher profits. The purpose of this multi-case study, guided by the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory, was to explore the strategies that Indian SME leaders used to adopt e-commerce platforms to expand their businesses. Data for this study emerged from conducting face-to-face, semistructured interviews with 3 SME leaders who operated in the manufacturing industry in western India. The data analysis process included validating, coding, interpreting, and summarizing data and generating themes. Methodological triangulation of data obtained from interviews, observations, and document review resulted in 4 major themes: leveraging the marketplace model, dealing with tedious governmental requirements, finding well-trained employees, and handling fraudulent product returns. The study results may contribute to positive social change in western India by generating greater employment opportunities and increasing e-commerce literacy among online shoppers. Wider e-commerce adoption by SME leaders can generate a large number of employment opportunities for people living in western India resulting in a better quality of life. Increased use of e-commerce activities among online shoppers can result in higher awareness about online frauds, identity theft, malware threats, and overall online security.

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