There has been a history of a strained relationship between the public and the police institution for decades; most recently as a result of documented high levels of arrest rates among marginalized communities. Stop and frisk practices have been active in the United States since the 1950s and have been studied academically in the United States since the 1990s. However, research concerning Canadian data is limited. This project, using Bourdieusian concepts (field, habitus, capital, and doxa) with other resistance to change/police culture research, addresses the gaps in literature surrounding the practice of ‘carding’ in Canada by determining the forms of strategies and capital used by parties to defend and contest the police practice in the city of Toronto. Using a form of Document Analysis, this project created inductive categories from reports and recommendations submitted by the Toronto Police, several activist groups, and the province of Ontario between the years of 2012-2015. Findings from this paper were similar to previous literature; however, we saw an emotional argument surrounding the use of risk emerge through those justifying the police practice of ‘carding’. This emotional argument relied on a platform of fear and risk discourse, arguing that having limited faith in police not only goes against previously accepted practices, but places our communities in greater potential danger. Furthermore, our findings showed that narratives presented by those contesting the practice of ‘carding’ saw legal and factual arguments emerge which were not seen in previous literature. These legal and factual arguments focused on Constitutionality and statistics to contest the practice of ‘carding’, rather than rely on emotional arguments as seen in previous literature. This project allowed for a snapshot of the case in Toronto to help understand the issue in a Canadian context. Many themes developed were similar to previous literature; however, we saw a new emotional argument surrounding a risk discourse and those contesting ’carding’ have accessed the legal ‘field’ to express concerns. Directions for future research are presented at the end of this study.

This study explores cultural representations and cultural adaptations made by translators in translated children's picture books. This study has two focuses. In the first part of this study, which is a critical content analysis, I examine the cultural representations depicted in Korean-to-English and English-to-Korean translated picture books, using cultural studies as a theoretical framework. In the second part of this study, I compare original and translated editions of Caldecott and popular Korean picture books to find out how the translators adapt cultural, ideological, and linguistic conflicts in the process of translation, using translation as a dialogic process. For the first part of this study, I found four categories related to the cultural representations: (1) a sense of belonging and societal membership; (2) constructing and challenging gender stereotypes; (3) constructing images of childhood; and (4) dominant visual images of South Korea/the United States. These findings indicate that the insider authors of Korean culture try to show authentic images of South Korea, using contemporary fiction stories. The Korean translated books also deal with various images of American culture authentically from historical fiction to contemporary fiction. However, a small number of books do not show broad cultural representations of both cultures. In the second focus of this study on cultural adaptations, the analysis directly compared original and translated editions of the same texts. The themes of cultural familiarity, adaptations regarding illustrations, completely different translations, omissions, additions, and changes of titles or book jackets were identified. These findings indicate that most American and Korean translators purposely made cultural adaptations in the process of translation in order to help target readers to have better understanding of these international books. Additionally, they did not change essential authentic features, such as the characters' names and geographic names. I also found mistranslations between the original and translated editions of books. These changes could have occured because the translators lacked knowledge of both cultures or of the deep structures of the stories. The implication section provides recommendations to publishers, translators, educators, parents, teacher educators, and researchers and suggestions for further research.

This study is based on 72 children's and young adult books that met the criteria of being about Muslims and published and circulated here in the U.S. They can be divided into the varied genres as 49 contemporary realistic fiction, 6 historical fiction, and 17 autobiographies, biographies, and memoirs. In-depth reading and coding were used to identify patterns based on a theoretical frame of postcolonial theory and the lens of cultural authenticity.The exploration of ideas focus on the following research questions related to children's and adolescent literature published and distributed in the US that depict Muslim cultures: What are the overall characteristics of the books? What are the background experiences of the authors, illustrators, and translators who write and distribute literature within the U.S. that reflect Muslim Cultures? How do the genres of contemporary realistic fiction, historical fiction, and biographies published for adolescents and children within the U.S. represent and frame the varied Muslim cultures? What are the relationships between the background experiences of the authors and the representations of Muslim cultures in their books?This work is grounded in the assumption that Muslims are presented in a certain manner in popular culture and literature in the U.S., and thus, postcolonial theory is relevant in unpacking issues within the literature about these people. This theory draws on these suppositions to unveil how knowledge is constructed and circulated in dealing with global power relations. It also sheds light on how the identities of natives become hybrids as the process of colonization in certain cases impacts the psyche of inhabitants of these regions.This study is a `critical content analysis' in comprehending how texts are based in the social, cultural, and political contexts in which they are created and read. Content analyses examine what texts are about, considering the content from a particular perspective. This method scaffolds and explained my research to support my analysis of the texts through postcolonial perspectives to observe how Muslims are portrayed within adolescent and children's literature in the U.S.

This thesis examines the representations of citizenship in award-winning children's novels from Finland, France, Sweden and the UK to analyse how the effects of recent cultural and economic developments affecting European societies are described and explored in children's literature. In recent years, both the EU and the nation-state have seemed to be in a state of crisis. I hypothesise that increased cultural and ethnic diversity, new alternative arenas of citizenship and economic scarcity are currently driving the crises and changes in European states, and each of these developments influences our conceptions of citizenship. Reading the novels, I use a qualitative method based on critical content analysis to identify the issues relating to citizenship that the novels deal with and then analyse what they say about said issues. I argue that the novels show some awarness of increased cultural diversity, for example by having diverse casts of characters or by addressing cultural difference. The theme of scarcity is especially evident in characters experiencing precarity and a concern for the environment. Furthermore, they focus on how using one's voice, giving an account of one's life and being listened to, can lead to empowerment. In some of the novels, the protagonists are presented as models of active citizens bravely changing society, whereas the other novels contain more of the characters' internal musings of where they belong, in terms of which nation-state they belong to, but also their place within the state.

Current events and social movements aimed at bringing awareness to oppressed groups have reminded us that the United States has still not achieved justice and equality for all. Social and political tensions have become inescapable in our increasingly connected world. Therefore, students need to learn about diverse ways of knowing and being in a pluralistic society. Since publishing and education companies compete for business, the amount of digital and print resources available to teachers can be overwhelming. Because a vital component of a multicultural education includes diverse materials that authentically portray views and experiences from a wide range of cultures, traditions, and values, it is necessary to critically analyze the curricular content that teachers are expected to use in their classrooms. The purpose of this study is to analyze the literature that is included in district-approved book lists for public schools to determine how these texts support the principles of multiculturalism and multicultural education in sixth-grade classrooms. The tenets of critical multicultural analysis (CMA) guided this critical content analysis. Because teachers in these districts are limited to choosing books from approved lists to read with their students, the texts for this study were selected from approved literature lists that were provided by three public schools in North Texas. Although previous research on curricula and textbook analysis is available, little of that research analyzes approved literature lists in public schools. Since school districts are preparing to teach changing demographics and are striving to become more equitable, this study can offer insight into how the chosen texts align with broader district goals for meeting the academic, social, and emotional needs of each student.

The purpose of this study was to analyze teacher-selected children's literature for its potential use with critical pedagogy in the elementary classroom. This multi-analytical study uses tenets from critical multicultural analysis (CMA) and components from visual analysis (VA) to guide a critical content analysis of teacher-selected children's literature. Since it is the only nationally-recognized book list solely selected by educators, the texts for this study were selected from the Teachers' Choices Reading List titles. Although prior research on teacher-selected literature for the potential use of critical pedagogy in the elementary classroom does not exist, the results of this study show many opportunities for such within the last three years of the Teachers' Choices Reading List. A discussion on these results is presented through Paulo Freire's concept of critical pedagogy, as described in three stages: critique, hope, and action. Implications for practice and research are suggested based on the results of the study.

Den här studien undersöker om det kan utrönas skillnader, och om så är fallet, i vad dessa skillnader består i, mellan manligt och kvinnligt skriftspråk i katastrofjournalistik med avseende på diskoteksbranden i Göteborg 1998 och tsunamikatastrofen 2004.    Dessa händelser valdes med utgångspunkt av att de liknar varandra, inte bara i att de faller under katastrofjournalistik, utan för att de båda krävde ett stort antal svenska dödsoffer och genom detta haft djupgående påverkan på det svenska samhället. Studiens empiri består av 78 nyhetsartiklar från Dagens Nyheteroch Svenska Dagbladet, vilka genererats med hjälp av databasen Retriever. Dessa har sedan undersökt noga genom text- och innehållsanalys med både kvantitativa och kvalitativa inslag.    Resultatet av studien visade att det i materialet fanns språkmässiga skillnader mellan könen. De kvinnliga journalisterna tenderade att använda fler pronomen i sina texter och att beskriva händelserna mer detaljrikt än männen. Dessutom tenderade nyhetstexterna som författats av kvinnor att vara mer emotionella och innehålla fler ord än de som författats av män, samtidigt som meningslängden i deras artiklar var kortare än männens. / This study is aiming to investigate if there is a detectable difference, and if so, what characterizes that difference, between female and male written language in news reports from two catastrophic events that have had great impact on the Swedish society, namely the disco fire in Gothenburg in 1998 and the tsunami that hit the Bay of Bengal in 2004.   For the purpose of the investigation, 78 articles were pulled from the Swedish newspapers Dagens Nyheterand Svenska Dagbladet, with help by the newspaper search engine Retriever. Those articles were then closely examined through the use of both qualitative and quantitative content analysis.    The study showed that there were some differences to be found in the language use of female and male journalists concerning the two news events. Some of these differences being that the female reporters both tended to use more pronouns in their texts, and too describe events in more detail than their male colleagues. Other features that set female and male articles apart, were that female texts tended to contain more words than male texts at the same time as being more emotionally orientated. Articles by female writers also tended to be divided into shorter sentences than articles by male writers.