The social sciences' interest in transnationalism has grown rapidly over the previous decade. The ethnographic case studies informing this burgeoning transnational literature, however, typically focus upon migration flows with one endpoint in the global North. This dissertation explores the experience of Indian transmigrants in contemporary Bahrain, one of the six petroleum-rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, as well as the impact of these transnational flows upon the Bahraini state. Like all the nations of the GCC, foreign guestworkers comprise a majority of the workforce in Bahrain, and a near majority of the absolute population--two aspects of the many that mark the transnational context of the contemporary Gulf as significantly different from those typical of the transnational literature.The arc of my ethnographic analysis draws upon transnational theory, diaspora studies, and critical approaches to the state, and visits three plateaus. First, I use migration narratives gathered from Indian transmigrants to delineate the structure of dominance that shapes relations between guestworker and citizen-host. The parameters of this structure stretch from the global political economy to the apparatuses of the Bahraini state and, through the kafala sponsorship system, to the individual relations between citizen-sponsors and guestworkers. This structure comprises the basis for the systemic exploitation of foreign labor. Second, I analyze the strategies different classes of the Indian transmigrant community utilize against this structure of dominance. For the poorest transmigrants, these strategies are often limited to movement between legal and illegal status, while the diasporic elite employ a strategic transnationalism to combat the vulnerabilities rendered by this system. Finally, I analyze the impact of these transnational flows upon the Bahraini state and citizenry. The structure of dominance, I argue, is essential to understanding the articulation of state-based power in Bahrain, for it provides a mechanism for citizens to cull profit from the private sector while maintaining a system for distributing state-controlled wealth that favors those well positioned in traditional social, familial, tribal relations. In essence, the Bahraini state comprises a form of resistance to the neoliberal logic of the global political economy--one that simultaneously structures inequities via those traditional fissures.

Much has been written about how the city of Berlin, Ontario – long a centre of Germanic industry and culture in Canada –changed its name to Kitchener in 1916 in the face of anti-German sentiments. Studies by Geoffrey Hayes and Ross Fair have particularly identified how a more acceptable form of German identity evolved in Kitchener after 1918, emphasizing the Pennsylvania Mennonite origins of many of the area’s first non-native settlers, instead of the continental German identity of much of the citizenry. But what of the Second World War, and the wave of German immigrants that came to Waterloo Region in its aftermath? Through what means did this community of immigrants establish its identity, and come to terms with the legacy of wartime Germany? How did the German community continue to evolve and react to political and social currents reverberating in Europe? This study addresses these questions by examining a number of episodes in the twentieth century that both celebrated and divided local German communities. Three examples will be discussed to help elucidate the concept of complex German identities in Kitchener-Waterloo. The formation of the Deutsche Bund Canada at the time of the Second World War, the creation of Oktoberfest in Kitchener-Waterloo in the late 1960s, as well as the visit of David Irving to Kitchener in 1992 represent events in the history of the area that lend themselves very naturally to further examination. While German immigrants have historically been regarded as a cohesive community, unified by attributes such as a shared language, it will be argued here based on these three examples, that Germans in Kitchener-Waterloo are comprised of unique groupings of ‘Germans’, whose identities vary depending on attributes such as geographic origin and time frame of emigration.

Much has been written about how the city of Berlin, Ontario – long a centre of Germanic industry and culture in Canada –changed its name to Kitchener in 1916 in the face of anti-German sentiments. Studies by Geoffrey Hayes and Ross Fair have particularly identified how a more acceptable form of German identity evolved in Kitchener after 1918, emphasizing the Pennsylvania Mennonite origins of many of the area’s first non-native settlers, instead of the continental German identity of much of the citizenry. But what of the Second World War, and the wave of German immigrants that came to Waterloo Region in its aftermath? Through what means did this community of immigrants establish its identity, and come to terms with the legacy of wartime Germany? How did the German community continue to evolve and react to political and social currents reverberating in Europe? This study addresses these questions by examining a number of episodes in the twentieth century that both celebrated and divided local German communities. Three examples will be discussed to help elucidate the concept of complex German identities in Kitchener-Waterloo. The formation of the Deutsche Bund Canada at the time of the Second World War, the creation of Oktoberfest in Kitchener-Waterloo in the late 1960s, as well as the visit of David Irving to Kitchener in 1992 represent events in the history of the area that lend themselves very naturally to further examination. While German immigrants have historically been regarded as a cohesive community, unified by attributes such as a shared language, it will be argued here based on these three examples, that Germans in Kitchener-Waterloo are comprised of unique groupings of ‘Germans’, whose identities vary depending on attributes such as geographic origin and time frame of emigration.

This report examines the use of grandmother figures in the construction of imagined communities in Arab American literature. Through the lens of diaspora studies, it argues that grandmother figures become integral in the creation of an Arab American imagined community based on two main tropes: a theoretical collapse between notions of patriotism and the maternal figure (in which the homeland becomes the Motherland) and the tendency of second-generation Arab American authors to connect their immigrant grandmothers to ethnic homelands. In exploring this connection, the report argues that the creation of an Arab American imagined community is necessitated by anti-Arab racism in the United States and the need for the community’s authors to be seen in tandem with the literary traditions of other ethnic minorities in America. The report problematizes the imagined homeland by arguing that it is constructed on the basis of simplistic juxtapositions between different generations within the Arab American community, and ends by examining the anxiety that is generated when this juxtaposition and the imagined community are threatened. / text

This thesis aims to observe and distinguish if the Cuban Diaspora in the U.S. still meets the conditions of being a diaspora. To examine this purpose, the thesis answer the tree following research questions: 1. How has the immigration of Cubans in the United States of Americas developed over the years? 2. What are the features of the present Cuban Diaspora in the United States of America? 3. Has the Cuban Diaspora changed its affiliation towards its homeland or host land? To answer these questions a theoretical framework has been made with three main points of what characteristics a diaspora has, which has been summarized from different researcher’s definition of the meaning of diaspora. The study is a case study, which will be formed by the method of a qualitative desk study, using the tool of process tracing. This for the ability to collect and process vast amounts of data, systematically go through the historical process of the Cuban diaspora in the U.S. that leads up to the present time and then analyze this with the theoretical framework. The conclusion of this essay shows a change within the Cuban Diaspora in the U.S. but is unable to point out clear that the diaspora does not meet the conditions of the chosen framework. The conclusion states that further research needs to be done within this area.

This dissertation reconsiders the creative and strategic crisscrossings among the African diaspora’s literary and cultural productions, paying special attention to the status and influence of Black America(ns), as a point of reference, on African and Afro-descendant writers working in French. Building upon the works of Paul Gilroy on the one hand, and Frida Ekotto on the other, I trace a major literary lineage in Afro-diasporic literature that revolves around the question of legibility. The texts studied in this dissertation are linked by their focus on a hermeneutic that is deployed along two main lines of thought. At the diegetic level, how are the characters being (mis)read by other members of the African diaspora, and reciprocally, how do the characters see these other members of the African diaspora and situate themselves in relation to them? At the meta-level, how does this reading system, or system of knowledge acquisition, invite or highlight a critique of genre (and gender) conventions and classifications? More specifically, I look at how writers such as Maryse Condé, Alain Mabanckou, and Léonora Miano establish affiliative ties with their Anglophone peers— Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Teju Cole, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—across the Black Atlantic and across generations, in order to challenge the French system of racial and literary classification. In so doing, I argue that they also participate in shaping the figure of the contemporary black intellectual on a global scale, from a non-American black perspective. The two main objectives of my research are to situate African, Caribbean, and Afro-descendant writers working in French within a transnational literary tradition that transcends the long-lasting polemical—and today outdated—category of “Francophone Literature,” and to account for their contributions to it. / 2024-03-04T00:00:00Z

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This thesis examines the role of music in British-South Asian postcolonial literature, asking how music relates to the possibility of constructing postcolonial identity. The focus is on novels that explore the postcolonial condition in India and the United Kingdom, as well as Pakistan and the United States: Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy (1993), Amit Chaudhuri's Afternoon Raag (1993), Suhayl Saadi's Psychoraag (2004), Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) and The Black Album (1995), and Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999). The analysed novels feature different kinds of music, from Indian classical to non-classical traditions, and from Western classical music to pop music and rock 'n' roll. Music is depicted as a cultural artefact and as a purely aestheticised art form at the same time. As a cultural artefact, music derives meaning from its socio-cultural context of production and serves as a frame of reference to explore postcolonial identities on their own terms. As purely aesthetic art, music escapes its contextual meaning. The transcendental qualities of music render music a space where identities can be expressed irrespective of origin and politics of location. Thereby, music in the novels marks a very productive space to imagine the postcolonial nation and to rewrite imperial history, to express the cultural hybridity of characters in-between nations, to analyse the state of the nation and life in the multicultural diaspora of contemporary Great Britain, and to explore the ramifications of cultural globalisation versus cultural imperialism. Analysing music's cultural meaning and aesthetic value in relation to postcolonial identity, this thesis opens up new frames of textual and cultural analysis that help understand the postcolonial condition from the interdisciplinary perspective of word and music studies.

This dissertation focuses on the African American community of Timbuctoo, Westampton, New Jersey. Timbuctoo was founded circa 1825 by formerly enslaved and free born African Americans. The community operated as a "station" along the Underground Railroad. At its peak Timbuctoo had over 125-150 residents and supported a general store, "colored" school, AMEZ church, cemetery and several homesteads. Today the only standing markers of the nineteenth century community are the gravestones in the cemetery. In 2007, Westampton Township acquired roughly four acres of the nearly forty arces that once comprised Timbuctoo. From 2009-2011, Christopher Barton and David Orr conducted archaeological work at the community. The focus of this dissertation was the excavation and analysis of 15,042 artifacts recovered from the Davis Site, Feature 13. The Davis Site was purchased by William Davis 1879. Davis and his wife Rebecca raised their five children in a 12x16ft home constructed on the 20x100ft property. Between the 1920s to the 1940s the foundation of the Davis home was used as a community trash midden. Specifically, this dissertation looks at the practices of yard sweeping, architecture, construction materials, home canning and the consumption of commodified foods. A practice theory of improvisation is posited as a working model to explaining the reflexive practices used by marginalized residents to contest social and economic repression. This theory of improvisation seeks to complicate narratives of poverty through underscoring the dynamic disposition of material culture and everyday life. / Anthropology

This dissertation examines current academic approaches to reading South Asian-Canadian literature as a multicultural “other” to Canadian national literature and proposes an alternative reading strategy that allows for these texts to be read within a framework of South Asian diasporic subjectivities situated specifically at the Canadian location. Shifting from the idea that “Canada” names a particular national identity and national literary culture to the idea that “Canada” names a particular geographic terrain at which different cultural, social, and historical vectors intersect and are creolized allows for a more nuanced reading of South Asian-Canadian literature, both in terms of its relationship to the complex history of the South Asian diaspora and in terms of the complex history of South Asian encounters with the Canadian space. Reading prose, poetry, drama, and theatrical institutions as locations where a specifically South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity is reflected, I am able to map a range of individual negotiations among the cultural vector of the “ancestral” past, the cultural vector of the influence of European colonialism, and the cultural vector of this place that demonstrate that the negotiation of South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity and its reflection in literature cannot be understood as producing a homogenous or “authentic” cultural identity. Instead, the literary expression of South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity argues that the outcome of negotiations between cultural vectors that take place in this location are as unique as the individuals who undertake those negotiations. These individual negotiations, I argue, need to be read collectively to trace out a continuum of possible expressions of South Asian-Canadian diasporic subjectivity, a continuum that emphasizes that the processes of negotiation are on-going and flexible. This dissertation challenges the assumption that Canadian literature can be contained within the limits of a Canadian nationalist mythology or ethnography. Instead of the literature of the Canadian “nation” or the Canadian “people,” Canadian literature is best understood as the literature produced in this location by all the “minority” populations, including the dominant “minority.” Reading Canadian literature, then, is reading the differential relationships to history and community that occur in this place and which are inscribed in these collectively Canadian texts.