Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 409-425).

Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009. / Title from screen (viewed on February 1, 2010). Department of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Michael Snodgrass, Kevin Cramer, Marianne S. Wokeck. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-174).

Thesis--Auburn University, 2009. / Abstract. Includes bibliographic references (p.87-89).

This dissertation looks at the responses of African American club women to the challenging racial environment of Kentucky from the late 1800s through the early decades of the 20th century. It explores their efforts to negotiate the dialectical relationship between local circumstances and national movements. While most discussions of club women argue that their work merely enabled respectability, this dissertation argues that its real significance lies in the way black club women established support systems and communication systems for other forms of activism. The black women's club movement is the communication arena which establishes networks for advancing the direct action protests of the modern Civil Rights Movement.

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This dissertation analyzes the narrative use of sound, the rhetorical appeal to be heard and the trope of listening in African American literature as well as Hollywood and international cinema. Contributing to the burgeoning fields of film sound and listening studies, Chapter One explores the relationship between the first experiments with synchronous sound recording technology and the construction of subjectivity along the lines of ethnicity, religion and gender in early talkies such as Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer and Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail. Chapter Two surveys a range of abolitionist texts and select essays from the Civil Rights movement--particularly David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, Frederick Douglass's first autobiography Narrative of the Life and his novella "The Heroic Slave," W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk and Richard Wright's White Man, Listen!--in order to review the role of listening across racial divides in the United States. Chapter Three analyzes the multiple ways in which listening functions for narrative purposes in Wright's best-selling novel, Native Son; and Chapter Four addresses the trouble with listening in Wright's posthumous novel A Father's Law and Hitchcock's first color film, Rope.Contributing to film studies, gender studies, and critical race theory, this thesis argues that the act of listening comes to function figuratively as a trope, signifying not only a means of recognition, interpellation and subjugation of an Other but also an instrument of justice; a matter of politics; a means of education; a potential remedy for alienation, while at the same time working as a tool of oppression; a formative act in familial and other social relations; a governing form of surveillance; an audial gaze, so to speak; a way to frighten, or more generally, evoke emotion; a part of the therapeutic process; an indication of trust or confidence; a manifestation of (sexual) desire; and, last but certainly not least, an age old form of entertainment forever transformed by sound technology of the industrial age.

In the early 1960s, African-American residents of southwest Georgia cooperated with organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to launch a freedom movement that would attempt to battle white supremacy and bring all Americans closer to their country's democratic ideals. Movement participants tried to overcome the fear ingrained in them by daily life in the Jim Crow South, and to reconstruct American society from within. Working within a tradition of black insurgency, participants attempted to understand the origins of the intimidation and powerlessness that they often felt, and to form a strong community based on mutual respect, equality, and trust. Black women played fundamental roles in shaping this movement and African-American resistance patterns more generally, and struggles such as the southwest Georgia movement reveal the ways in which black people have identified themselves as American citizens, equated citizenship with political participation, and reinterpreted American democratic traditions along more just and inclusive lines. This thesis begins with a narrative of the movement. It then moves on to discuss SNCC's efforts to build community solidarity and empower African-American residents of southwest Georgia, and to consider the notion that SNCC owed its success to the activism of local women and girls. Next, it proposes that in the southwest Georgia movement there was no clear distinction between public and private space and work, and it suggests that activism in the movement emerged from traditional African-American patterns of family and community organization. Finally, this thesis asserts that the mass jail-ins for which the movement became famous redefined and empowered the movement community. This analysis reconsiders the analytical categories with which scholars generally study social movements. Instead of employing a linear narrative structure that emphasizes formal political activity and specific tactical victories, this thesis suggests that political participation takes diverse forms and it highlights the cycles of community building and individual empowerment that characterize grassroots organizing. It underscores the sheer difficulty of initiating and sustaining a mass struggle, and argues that the prerequisite to forming an insurgent movement is the ability of individuals to envision alternative social and cultural possibilities.

This thesis is concerned with two central questions. The first is theoretical and asks, "Can a direct appeal be made to the foundational principles of liberalism to support collective rights?" The second question is practical and asks: "Would such a defense serve the interests of contemporary Canadian Aboriginal claims to special constitutionally recognized collective rights known as the Aboriginal Right?" I utilize Will Kymlicka's defense of minority rights as the theoretical framework in assessing this first question and in assessing the latter, I refer to various reported Aboriginal conceptions of the so-called Aboriginal Right which have been formalized by Aboriginal people themselves through constitutional addresses, Royal Commission hearings, discussion papers and legal claims. Part I of the thesis involves an enquiry into the nature of the revisions that Kymlicka proposes to make to liberal theory, and asks whether, in making such changes, he is able to retain identification with the so-called "modern" liberals, with whom Kymlicka identifies himself, and consistently defend the kind of group minority rights of the sort actually being claimed in Canadian society today. I conclude that Kymlicka argument fails in two respects: it fails to do the work required of it by modern liberals and it ultimately fails to do the work required by the standards of Kymlicka own theory. In Part II, I argue that even if it were theoretically possible to protect the good of culture in the way that Kymlicka hopes, such a defense of collective rights fails in the most important respect: that is, it cannot do the work required of it by the Aboriginal people for whom it was designed.

This study was conducted using a qualitative descriptive approach. It was based on an analysis that was done to determine awareness and attitude of patients in end of life issues. The semi-structured interviews were conducted for data collection. A sample of ten patients, five inpatient and five outpatient, was purposively chosen. Permission was obtained from the hospital superintendent and heads of departments, and also consent from patients, for the study. Data was analyzed, using the NVIVO program, a computer software, for data coding, and a conceptual model for categorization. From the findings, the researcher concluded that poor communication causes lack of knowledge in patients, which in turn limits the capacity for decision making in patients. The researcher also noted that participants were not aware of their autonomy in decision-making. / Thesis (M.Cur.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

This study explores radical pacifists’ intellectual engagement with the black freedom movement by examining the New York-based magazine Liberation between 1956 and 1965. It argues that two priorities shaped Liberation’s responses to the movement: the concern to promote the philosophy and practice of nonviolent direct action, and the concern to advocate radical social change in the United States. Until 1965 Liberation promoted the civil rights movement as a potential catalyst for the nonviolent reconstruction of U.S. democracy. Liberation became a forum for exploring the common ground as well as the tensions between radical pacifist priorities and those of various black freedom activists. The tensions are particularly apparent in Liberation’s reflections on the challenges of linking peace activism with the freedom struggle in the early 1960s, and in its 1964-65 debate over civil rights leaders’ strategy of coalition with the Democratic Party in the context of the escalating war in Vietnam.