The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of Spanish-speaking men in the United States with limited English proficiency following their release from prison. The study specifically examined the experiences of these men in their efforts to access health care treatment, housing, education, and employment in Central Pennsylvania. An empirical, phenomenological research design was employed that used self-stigma, critical race, and self-determination theories for in-depth interviews with 8 men who spent 5 to 24 years in prison. A tiered coding method was used to generate 6 interconnected themes that tell the story of these men's lives: (1) a genuine desire to change (2) a lack of effective communication, (3) a sense of dependency on others, (4) a persistent lack of social support, (5) a perception of resentencing by society, and (6) a perception of entrapment with little possibility to get out. This study promotes positive social change by demonstrating a need for more effective transitional programs for this demographic and additional need for counselor training programs to actively recruit and train more Spanish-speaking counselors for work with this population. The results can be used by counselors and mental health providers to develop programs that would support families such as job training and second language instruction within correctional facilities. Implementing these recommendations is expected to reduce crime and facilitate the healthy integration of this population into the mainstream society post incarceration.

This thesis highlights the practice of writing as a way to engage with the amorphous thing-space-State-city-nation-citizens that is

A review of literature has revealed a dearth of research on leisure swimming patterns of Black females. Black youth, both male and female, have a higher rate of drowning than any other racial/ethnic group in the United States (“Water‐related injuries: Fact sheet”, 2005). Two known studies produced by (Irwin et al., 2009; 2010) examining hair as a constraint to swimming for African American youth produced conflicting results. In order to comprehensively examine hair as a constraint to African American female participation in swimming, the current study adopted a qualitative approach which allowed exploration of the cultural background and experiences of the participants enrolled in a required swimming class at Yates University (this is a pseudonym used throughout this research). The following research questions guided the study (a) How does hair influence swimming participation choices of Black females and (b) What is the self-reported degree of difficulty in the constraints negotiation process for Black females who do swim? The major finding is that hair acts as a constraint to swimming for participants of this study, but participants offered ways of negotiating this constraint to still be active participants in swimming.

This work asks how and for whom humiliation can be therapeutic. J. M. Coetzee, in his works Waiting for the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace, does not simply critique the mentality of Empire, an “Enlightenment” or colonialist mode of knowing that knows no bounds to reason, but offers an alternative through the Magistrate, Michael K and David Lurie, all of whom are brutally shamed and “abjected”. Each character, I propose, experiences a Lacanian “therapy of humiliation” resulting in a subversion of their egos, which they come to understand as antagonistic, a site of misrecognition. In doing so, these characters confront limitation, whether by means of a Lacanian “death drive” or the abjection of the self. I argue, this subversion of their egos necessitates a return to the humility of the body resulting in a new ethical openness to others and an engagement with the world through “care” or “love” or “beauty” which manifests as careful negotiation and attentiveness. Confrontation with death, thus, allows the Magistrate, Michael K and David Lurie to slough off “Enlightenment” values in favor of an anti-humanist way of living.

In reading the literary criticism on Janet Frame's work it soon turns out that Frame was deconstructive before the concept was even invented. Thus, deconstruction is used in this essay to close-read a passage in the title story of her collection of short stories, The Lagoon (1951). The main hierarchical dichotomy of the passage is found to be the one between "the sea" and "the lagoon," in which the sea is proven to hold supremacy. "The sea" is read as an image of the great sea of English literary/cultural reference whereas "the lagoon" is read as an image of the vulnerably interdependent, peripheral pool of it, in the form of New Zealand literary/cultural reference. Through this symbolic and post-colonial reading the hierarchical dichotomy between "the sea" and "the lagoon" is deconstrued and reversed. In the conclusion, a post-colonial trace of Maori influence displaces the oppositional relation between "the sea" and "the lagoon."

The German Armed Forces were originally thought to be completely innocent of all war crimes associated with unethical Nazi racial policies. This has been proven not to be the case. History has adjusted itself to show that Wehrmacht forces were guilty of virtually every war crime except for the sexual violation foreign women. Due to the long-standing assumption that Nazi racial ideology prevented the intermingling of the “Aryan” race with the “unworthy” Eastern European races, this myth was rarely questioned. Given the lack of hard evidence proving that civilian women were raped by invading Wehrmacht troops, a firm conclusion is out of the question. However, with a concrete understanding of the Nazi attitude towards sexual relations, the components in the East that led to a breakdown in Wehrmacht discipline, and the resulting reaction of the Soviet Union in light of this brutality, one can surmise the type of violence women were forced to endure. Through the research conducted in this thesis, it is likely that the mass rape of Eastern European women did indeed occur. The silence that surrounds this issue is highly indicative of the cultural elements that prevent an open discussion of this topic. This thesis is meant to spark a discussion of the implications and reverberations of mass rape in a wartime setting.

During the 1960s and 1970s, tribes across Indian Country struggled for tribal sovereignty against “termination” policies that aimed to disintegrate the federal government’s trust responsibilities and treaty obligations to tribes and assimilate all Indians into mainstream society. Individual tribes, pan-Indian organizations, and militant Red Power activists rose up in resistance to these policies and fought for self-determination: a preservation of Indian distinctiveness and social and political autonomy. This thesis examines a crucial, but often overlooked, element of the self-determination movement. Hundreds of tribal and national-scope activist newspapers emerged during this era and became the authentic voices of American Indians and the messengers of the movement. This thesis examines the stories of several key newspapers. By looking at the opportunities and challenges their editors faced and the different approaches they took, this thesis will assess how they succeeded and fell short in telling authentic stories from Indian Country, fighting for distinct indigenous culture and rights, and reshaping public discourse and policy on American Indian affairs.

Women of color are still trapped in the colonialist trajectory of Delacroix’s sexualized Women of Algiers (1834) and alienated from the world of Sargent’s Daughters of Edward Darley Boit (1882) in contemporary media images that serve to exocitize, fetishize, and commodify non-white female bodies. These historical and contemporary images form a psychological weight both imposed on women of color by outside perceptions and by now-cemented internal perceptions. While women do not passively absorb media images, it cannot be ignored that the hypersexual Asian/American woman in representation “haunts the experiences and perceptions of Asian women” despite attempts to reject these images and efforts to identify empowering aspects of images of sexual power (Shimizu 2007). Ideas and expectations of sexual openness in women of color seep into our consciousness at many moments in our personal lives and cast doubt on Asian/American women’s engagements with sexuality. Resistance of and escape from objectification as an erotic racial signifier of difference are attempted through abstraction and self portraiture.

This thesis explores the structures of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy as embodied in US systems of oppression and violence both within the United States and in El Salvador. As the United States illegally funded and trained the Salvadoran military during its 1978-1992 civil war, it simultaneously transformed the domestic prison system into one of mass incarceration, torture, and social death. In examining both policies, their roots in violence, racial capitalism, and gendered oppression emerge. Furthermore, by focusing the examination within a gendered lens, the potential of such methods of resistance such as radical transnational feminist praxis come to the forefront as today’s most integrated method of tearing down such pernicious systems of violence. As this thesis connects the dots between seemingly disparate structures of exclusion and incapacitation, the global levels of both infrastructural violence and feminist resistance surface.

This thesis examines the issues of the modern French education system through an analysis of the film, Entre Les Murs (2008) and French education's socio-historical and political context. The study finds that the way in which France thinks about authority, language, and multiculturalism leads to the exclusion of certain students from the learning process. The aim of the study is to critically rethinks these issues in light of theories on race, identity, and postcolonialism in order to eventually propose solutions so that all students may fully flourish in modern French society.