This report examines diasporic dialogues in Black concert dance focusing on dialogues between Brazil and the United States and analyzes how racial politics and cultural exchanges contributed to shape a Black aesthetic in Brazil. Since the beginning of the 20th century, both the presence/passage of US Black dancers/choreographers in Brazil and the presence/passage of Brazilian Black dancers/choreographers in the United States enabled the formation of socio-political networks among artists and cultural cross-fertilization between these countries. Katherine Dunham’s visit in Brazil and Mercedes Batista’s visit in the United States during the 1950s were formative of a Brazilian black concert dance and had left a lasting imprint in black modern dance in the U.S. as well. This report attempts a close reading of the dialogues between Dunham and Batista that shaped the dance techniques and repertoire that make up black modern and postmodern dance in the African diaspora. / text

This thesis explores selected texts by the contemporary author Colum McCann (b.1965), situating his work within a larger transnational Irish canon. The project traces how notions of Irish identity interact with experiences of diaspora, migration and race; throughout the thesis, close attention is paid to the role and function of literary form. After an introduction which maps out the material covered in the thesis, the project opens with a contextual chapter entitled ‘Deoraí: Exile, Wanderer, Stranger: (Post)colonial Ireland and making sense of place’. This chapter sets up the methodological frameworks that guide the thesis through a meditation on exile in an Irish and postcolonial context. My second chapter, ‘Deterritorialised novels: McCann’s short stories as Minor Literature in an (Northern) Irish Mode’, focuses on McCann’s short stories, paying particular attention to those set in the North of Ireland. Invoking Thomas MacDonagh’s notion of an Irish Mode and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of Minor Literature, I argue that the rejection of the novel in favour of the short story is a form of literary politics inflected with anti-colonial sentiment. Continuing my examination of literary form, my third chapter, ‘Nomadism and Storytelling in Zoli: oral culture, embodiment and travelling tales’, highlights the ambivalence of orality within McCann’s novel Zoli and works towards establishing what a textual practice of storytelling might be, in addition to probing at the representation of nomadic peoples across McCann’s work. The next chapter is entitled ‘Topography of Violence’: race, belonging and the underbelly of the cosmopolitan city in This Side of Brightness’. This discusses the cosmopolitan ethics that underpin McCann’s novel and how these are grounded by the close attention McCann pays to the experiential realities of America’s (often racialised) underclass through McCann’s depiction of interracial love. My final chapter ‘TransAtlantic: Frederick Douglass, the Irish Famine and the Troubles with the black and green Atlantics’, maps out the overlapping histories of the black and green Atlantics, tests the validity of the ostensible affinity between the two groups and asks how useful conventional chronological narratives are in the representation of their histories. Finally, I finish with ‘Minor Voices, race and rooted cosmopolitanism’, which concludes that McCann’s fiction articulates a need for rooted cosmopolitan and critically engaged nomadic thought which embraces Minor Voices and rejects exclusionary politics.

This project argues that American college sports involving Black male athletes (primarily football and men’s basketball) at Gulf Coast State University (GCSU) actively construct and impact local knowledge about Black masculinity in relation to white, male, hetero-normative systems of authority. These sports, in turn, then impact policy, administrative decisions, and teaching approaches as they relate to young Black men on a college campus. In other words, Black male college athletes on a white college campus offer the opportunity for a reinforcement of systems of authority through the pattern of de-stabilizing their subjectivity (as nothing more than physical entities) in order to provide a revenue-generating resource for the university. I posit that the positioning of Black males in this space as athletes and as students is strategic and intentional, when one takes into account the ongoing dynamic of the hegemonic positioning of white, male, hetero-normative value systems as the unmarked standard of social norms. That these contested meanings become significant within the realm of sport situates sport itself as another, often underutilized, space for social inquiry. I further argue that this categorization is heightened in the context of a predominantly white institution. Through ethnographic fieldwork, I explored the sport (mainly football and men’s basketball) and academic community at GCSU with the goal of understanding how high-profile and high-revenue sports and their participants become central to the understanding and expression of normalized ideas about race, gender, and sexuality. I reason that the predominantly white demography of GCSU, added to the uneven ratio of Black to white males on the football and basketball teams, creates perceptions about race and masculinity that factor into people’s everyday understanding of the term “student-athlete”. The term “student-athlete” becomes racialized and gendered in ways that continually make reference to Black male athletes differently than other students and student-athletes at the university. I believe these effects on the term then impacts the structural mechanisms that affect the daily lives of these Black male athletes both on and off the field, both inside and outside the classroom. / text

Homicide deaths are a common reality in Brazil. Every year, approximately 50,000 people die from this violent crime. Between January 2009 and February 2010, 7,936 people were killed just on the state of Rio de Janeiro. Of this amount, 1,185 were committed by the police, not including the number of disappeared people in this state, came up to 6,379. This report seeks to address the political and analytical challenges of understanding and redressing the negative impacts of state policies and everyday practices, especially violence, on Black Brazilians, particularly disadvantaged Black women, through a revision of relevant scholarship. I first draw attention to three distinct approaches of violence of the state of Rio de Janeiro, and on Black people’s resistance practice. Second, I connect Rio de Janeiro’s practices of state violence with contemporary and historical experiences of racial terror in the African Diaspora through policing Black youth and Black communities, imprisonment, and violence against Black women. And finally, I theorize on the relevance of my work to Black feminism, African Diaspora, and activist theories addressing the politics of fieldwork and the impact of the research on that experience. The knowledge apprehended through this report contributes to my own and further research on state violence against Black people in Brazil and throughout the African Diaspora. / text

In this study, I argue that theorizing about the lived experiences of Black diasporic subjects, specifically, Sub-Saharan African women living in the U.S., must simultaneously take into account cultural parameters of their home country and host culture. I use the term “Black feminisms” as an umbrella term to advocate for an interdisciplinary approach to Black feminist thought and African feminism as tools for analyzing the lived experiences of Sub-Saharan women in diaspora. Specifically, this dissertation investigates how Sub-Saharan women living in the U.S. define, understand and orient to feminist practices in everyday life and how such processes shape their identities as diasporic subjects. By doing so, it seeks to examine how Black feminisms can operate as a tool for promoting social justice through the analysis of Sub-Saharan women’s identity politics in diasporic contexts. To gain insights on Sub-Saharan women’s understanding and performance of feminisms across cultures, I relied on a combination of ethnographic methods. First, I used a critical-performance ethnographic framework to explore how feminism is understood and deployed by Sub-Saharan women in diasporic contexts. My data were collected via a combination of in-depth qualitative interviews, co-performative fieldwork, and every day interactions. Second, I used autoethnographic narrative to explore my own everyday performances of feminisms as a diasporic Congolese woman moving between Congolese and American cultures. Participants’ lived experiences reveal that diaspora operates as a liminal/third/”in-between” space where Sub-Saharan women have to constantly negotiate gendered practices in everyday life at the borderland of two cultural worldviews: African and American. By immigrating to the U.S., these women are expected to integrate the cultural and social values of their host culture while maintaining the customs, traditions, and beliefs that constitute their African cultural legacy and which continue to shape their identities in their daily life. Consequently, while participants unanimously agreed on the relevance of feminism for improving the living conditions of African women on the continent and elsewhere, they insisted on a feminist agenda resonant with the peculiarities of African culture, yet promoting cultural exchange between African and American cultures. In light of these findings, this dissertation advocates for a hybrid feminist agenda - which I refer to as “Black diasporic feminism”- applicable to the lived experiences of Sub-Saharan women in diasporic contexts.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T20:39:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 4317.pdf: 1013249 bytes, checksum: a4c736ad0acd9e2a39428b509035b860 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-12-19 / O objetivo desse trabalho foi o de identificar as razões pelas quais músicos negros no Brasil enfatizam categorias raciais em algumas de suas letras. As relações sociais racializadas no Brasil possuem o entendimento, a partir da interpretação de Gilberto Freyre, da existência de uma homogeneidade mestiça (mestiçagem) por meio de uma trajetória cultural da possível evolução de uma sociedade composta de povos indígenas, africanos e europeus brancos. Embora várias pesquisas demonstrassem por meio da desmistificação no campo sociológico, do que se convencionou nomear como democracia racial e comprovar por meio do uso sistemático das estatísticas e indicadores sociais a relação empírica das distinções fenotípicas como símbolos de distinções sociais, verificou-se que a concepção freyriana orientou os estudos sobre a música brasileira, em especial sobre o samba, que passou a ser compreendido como símbolo da autenticidade brasileira. No entanto, identificou-se uma regularidade de letras de canções de alguns músicos negros enfatizando uma pertinência à raça nas composições. Desse modo surge a questão de pesquisa: qual a razão da ênfase de músicos negros as categorias raciais em suas letras. Como resposta para esse questionamento verificou-se a partir da análise de três grupamentos de letras discriminados ao longo do século XX extraídas do Catálogo de Discos e Partituras e do Catálogo de Música da Divisão de Música da Biblioteca Nacional, selecionadas por pesquisas combinadas - que o conteúdo das letras confirmou a regularidade da temática racial na música feita por negros, permitindo concluir que o argumento da mestiçagem é insatisfatório, por corresponder a um esforço das elites latino-americanas para obliterar identidades nacionais e recriá-las à imagem da Europa. As evidências mostraram que a pertinência à raça sobressaiu a concepção Freyriana de mestiçagem. Desse modo as causas para a ênfase na abordagem racial por parte dos músicos negros deveu-se a apropriação cultural do arcabouço político criado a partir da intervenção do Movimento Negro brasileiro, e que as letras apresentam marcas de uma música negra da Diáspora Africana no Brasil.

O presente estudo visa compreender quais as principais tendências na atualidade relativamente aos novos empreendedores portugueses que se encontram a desenvolver um negócio fora de Portugal e os setores de investimento predominantes. Procura-se compreender as características destes novos empresários portugueses e o seu contributo na diáspora. Esta investigação analisa também as motivações na decisão destes empresários empreenderem no país de acolhimento, tornando-se pertinente investigar qual a influência que Portugal exerce nestes empresários, enquanto país de origem dos mesmos. Para este efeito aprofundamos os conceitos de empreendedorismo e de emigração, com um foco especial na dinâmica portuguesa, através de uma revisão bibliográfica nesse sentido. A metodologia adotada é de natureza quantitativa com a realização de um inquérito enviado a empresários portugueses que se encontram na diáspora, com a sua disponibilização através de Associações de Emigrantes Portugueses, Câmaras de Comércio Internacionais, Associações de Empresários Portugueses, Consulados, e alguns contactos pessoais, contando com o apoio do Conselho da Diáspora Portuguesa, do Conselho das Comunidades Portuguesas, e do Gabinete de Apoio ao Investidor da Diáspora, para a obtenção de informação relevante sobre esta temática. / The present study aims to understand which are the main trends currently thriving in the world, relatively to the new Portuguese entrepreneurs who develop a business outside Portugal and their main sectors of investment. The research is focused in the comprehension of the Portuguese entrepreneurs' characteristics, and their contribution in the diaspora. This research also analyses the motivations that lead these entrepreneurs to decide to undertake in the foreign country, becoming hence relevant investigate the influence that Portugal - the origin country - has on these entrepreneurs. For this purpose, we developed the concepts of entrepreneurship and emigration, with a special emphasis on the Portuguese matters, being the literature review widely focused on that point of view. The methodology adopted was quantitative, with a survey being sent to Portuguese entrepreneurs in the diaspora, through the Associations of Portuguese Emigrants, the International Chambers of Commerce, the Associations of Portuguese Entrepreneurs, the Portuguese Consulates and some personal contacts, counting with the support of Portuguese Diaspora Council, Council of Portuguese Communities and the Office for Diaspora Investors Support (GAID), in order to obtain valuable information regarding this topic.

Denna avhandling är en komparativ undersökning av pågående förändringsprocesser bland kurder i Marseillesregionen i Frankrike och Stockholmsregionen i Sverige. I fokus står skiftet från en endimensionell och offerrelaterad kurdisk diasporisk identitet mot en mer sammansatt och aktiv. Studien går bortom entydiga erfarenheter av smärta, trauma och offerkänsla i syfte att lyfta fram en rad andra diasporiska situationer och företeelser såsom institutionella och transnationella formationer, assabiyya nätverk, ”on air” och ”online” verksamheter, kulturella och litterära aktiviteter osv., som samtliga är centrala element när det gäller att upprätthålla ett gränsöverskridande medborgarskap bland diasporiska kurder i de bägge länderna. Studien vidhåller dessutom att kurder i både Sverige och Frankrike på olika sätt är utsatta för diskriminering och socialt utanförskap. Avhandlingen visar hur kurder i Frankrike och Sverige utvecklar olika diasporiska diskurser och handlingsmönster. Beroende på en relativt likartad social bakgrund och på den exkluderande politiska miljö som finns i Frankrike så upprätthåller kurderna i Marseillesområdet en påtagligt offerrelaterad diasporisk diskurs. Samtidigt är framväxten av ett gränsöverskridande medborgarskap här starkt begränsad. Eftersom kurderna i Sverige är dels jämförelsevis socialt och politiskt diversifierade och dels vistas i en mer gynnsam politisk miljö upprätthåller de inte bara en mer flexibel diasporisk diskurs än kurder i Marseillesområdet. De har också utvecklat ett mer långtgående gränsöverskridande medborgarskap. / This study is a comparative exploration of an ongoing process of change from a mono-dimensional, victim-related Kurdish diasporic identity to a more modulated, dynamic and active form of it among Kurds in the Marseille region in France and the Stockholm region in Sweden. The study goes beyond the experience of pain and trauma and the sense of victimhood in order to depict a multitude of other diasporic situations and trajectories such as institutional and transnational arrangements, assabiyya networks, “on air” and cyberspace “online” involvements, cultural and literary activities, and so forth, which are necessary elements for the development of the practice of transborder citizenship among diasporan Kurds in the two countries. The study argues that the Kurds in France and Sweden have conceived different diasporic discourses and at the same time have chosen different modes of action. Due to their uniform social background and the exclusionary French political environment, the Kurds in the region of Marseille maintain a tangible victim diaspora discourse and limited practice of transborder citizenship. As the Kurds in Sweden are socially and politically diversified, and as they live in the more favorable Swedish political environment, they maintain not only a flexible diaspora discourse but also a more highly developed practice of transborder citizenship than the Kurds in the Marseille region.

. A presente dissertação tem por objetivo observar a influência da black music norte-americana na formação da identidade dos jovens negros que frequentam as festas da cena black paulistana. Para isso, procura-se debruçar sobre os fatores históricos, sociais, culturais e políticos que propiciam essa dinâmica. A motivação para a realização do trabalho nasce da participação em eventos nos dois países em diferentes momentos, onde se fez perceptível certa semelhança no comportamento dos jovens, o que despertou o desejo de investigar quão profundos seriam esses laços entre grupos tão distintos. A partir da perspectiva dos Estudos Culturais intenta-se mostrar como há mais de quatro décadas a black music atua como um elo entre povos da diáspora africana. O embasamento teórico e as entrevistas realizadas permitem contextualizar o fenômeno e trilhar um percurso que demonstra como a partir da escravidão e da forma como o pensamento racial se estruturou, a sociedade brasileira foi gerada de forma excludente deixando o negro sem referenciais positivos para formar sua identidade, o que faz com que as manifestações afro-americanas sirvam de inspiração, ainda que existam diferenças nas relações raciais nos dois países. Essa aproximação se dá principalmente no campo cultural, em especial por meio da música, que se manifesta na diáspora como um memorial à ancestralidade africana. Essa dinâmica tem início ainda na década de 1970 com os grandes bailes blacks, se transforma na década de 1980 com o surgimento do movimento hip hop em São Paulo e chega ao século 21, em uma nova fase de baladas blacks que podem ser vistas como um forte exemplo das mudanças ocorridas no novo milênio a partir do advento da globalização. Utilizo como metodologia a pesquisa bibliográfica, por meio de livros, vídeos e websites além de observações realizadas a partir de experiências pessoais e entrevistas, o que permite uma maior compreensão do fenômeno. / This dissertation aims to observe the influence of American black music in the identity formation of the black youth who attend the black party scene in Sao Paulo city. We look into the historical, social, cultural and political factors that favor this dynamic. The motivation is participation in events in both countries at different moments, which aroused the desire to investigate these deep ties between such distinct groups. From the Cultural Studies perspective we show how American black music has played a role in the link between diaspora people. The theoretical basement and the interviews allows us to contextualize this phenomenon and to view a path showing how from slavery the way racial thought was structured in Brazilian society has generated exclusionary ideas which didnt give positive influences for the black identity. That makes the African American manifestations serve as inspirations even if there are differences in the racial relations in both countries. This approximation occurs mainly in the cultural field. Especially through the music, which manifests in the diaspora as a memorial to the African inheritance. This dynamic started in the 1970s at huge black balls and underwent a transformation in the 1980s with creation of the hip hop movement in Sao Paulo and arrives to the 21st century in a new phase of black clubs which can be observed as a strong example of the changes that globalization has brought. As methodology I used bibliographical research through books, videos, sites and also observations through personal experiences and interviews which allow better comprehension of the phenomenon.

. A presente dissertação tem por objetivo observar a influência da black music norte-americana na formação da identidade dos jovens negros que frequentam as festas da cena black paulistana. Para isso, procura-se debruçar sobre os fatores históricos, sociais, culturais e políticos que propiciam essa dinâmica. A motivação para a realização do trabalho nasce da participação em eventos nos dois países em diferentes momentos, onde se fez perceptível certa semelhança no comportamento dos jovens, o que despertou o desejo de investigar quão profundos seriam esses laços entre grupos tão distintos. A partir da perspectiva dos Estudos Culturais intenta-se mostrar como há mais de quatro décadas a black music atua como um elo entre povos da diáspora africana. O embasamento teórico e as entrevistas realizadas permitem contextualizar o fenômeno e trilhar um percurso que demonstra como a partir da escravidão e da forma como o pensamento racial se estruturou, a sociedade brasileira foi gerada de forma excludente deixando o negro sem referenciais positivos para formar sua identidade, o que faz com que as manifestações afro-americanas sirvam de inspiração, ainda que existam diferenças nas relações raciais nos dois países. Essa aproximação se dá principalmente no campo cultural, em especial por meio da música, que se manifesta na diáspora como um memorial à ancestralidade africana. Essa dinâmica tem início ainda na década de 1970 com os grandes bailes blacks, se transforma na década de 1980 com o surgimento do movimento hip hop em São Paulo e chega ao século 21, em uma nova fase de baladas blacks que podem ser vistas como um forte exemplo das mudanças ocorridas no novo milênio a partir do advento da globalização. Utilizo como metodologia a pesquisa bibliográfica, por meio de livros, vídeos e websites além de observações realizadas a partir de experiências pessoais e entrevistas, o que permite uma maior compreensão do fenômeno. / This dissertation aims to observe the influence of American black music in the identity formation of the black youth who attend the black party scene in Sao Paulo city. We look into the historical, social, cultural and political factors that favor this dynamic. The motivation is participation in events in both countries at different moments, which aroused the desire to investigate these deep ties between such distinct groups. From the Cultural Studies perspective we show how American black music has played a role in the link between diaspora people. The theoretical basement and the interviews allows us to contextualize this phenomenon and to view a path showing how from slavery the way racial thought was structured in Brazilian society has generated exclusionary ideas which didnt give positive influences for the black identity. That makes the African American manifestations serve as inspirations even if there are differences in the racial relations in both countries. This approximation occurs mainly in the cultural field. Especially through the music, which manifests in the diaspora as a memorial to the African inheritance. This dynamic started in the 1970s at huge black balls and underwent a transformation in the 1980s with creation of the hip hop movement in Sao Paulo and arrives to the 21st century in a new phase of black clubs which can be observed as a strong example of the changes that globalization has brought. As methodology I used bibliographical research through books, videos, sites and also observations through personal experiences and interviews which allow better comprehension of the phenomenon.