With the onset of tourism growth in the Dominican Republic, particularly in the province of Samana, a unique opportunity for exploration into intercultural interactions between Dominicans and tourists exists. This thesis brings together some of the current studies on intercultural communication in regards to the tourism industry, perceived community attitudes towards tourism, and host-guest relationships in the tourism context. Two groups of Dominicans were studied, those who worked in the tourism industry and those who did not, teachers, respectively. Data was extracted from collected questionnaires and interviews which revealed positive attitudes towards tourism, interest in expanding tourism, and various positive stereotypes towards tourists and about Dominicans themselves. In conclusion, the results were consistent with past research and include present recommendations on how to make the Dominican tourism sector even more receptive to the importance of intercultural communication.

Each year, four million Americans travel abroad as participants in short-term missions (STMs), the religious branch of the billion-dollar volunteer-tourism industry. Rooted in 13 months of multi-sited ethnographic research, this dissertation examines evangelical STMs in the Dominican Republic as vehicles for evangelization and voluntarism in the contexts of postcolonial tourism and the production of sugar for the global market. In doing so, it also examines STMs as important sites of religious socialization for American participants, particularly, socialization of moral ideologies. These moral ideologies, expressed and performed through the discursive practices, religious rituals, and routinized cross-cultural interactions that are characteristic of STMs, (re)create and justify unequal power relations between Americans and Dominicans. STMs expose American volunteers to striking socioeconomic and racial inequalities, which could powerfully (re)shape their worldviews by raising their awareness, for example, of the exploitative working and living conditions behind a ubiquitous commodity, sugar. However, STM leaders and volunteers conceptualize these inequalities in ways that are inconsistent or contradictory, disconnected from their understandings of inequality back home, and decontextualized from broader processes and systems, including colonialism and contemporary global capitalism. The personal narratives and the religious and economic discourses that are (re)produced during STMs shape American participants’ understandings of inequalities and cultivate a moral subjectivity in which they are divinely charged with the responsibility of ameliorating others’ poverty, lack of social welfare, and poor living conditions. STM discourses and practices thus legitimize forms of charitable giving that may actually contribute to poverty and inequality by concealing Americans’ pre-existing socioeconomic relations with Dominicans. Amid heightened efforts to dismantle social welfare in the US, it is increasingly important to deconstruct ideologies and practices of giving in order to understand why evangelical Christians prefer charity, which provides only partial and temporary relief at best, over other methods that could provide more sustainable and transformative solutions to poverty and inequality. The research presented in this dissertation reveals that, despite what participants believe to be their moral intentions and good works, STMs work in various ways to perpetuate inequalities between sending and receiving countries. / Anthropology

Narratives of resisting the Trujillo regime are so prevalent in Dominican-American literature that it seems Dominican-American authors must write about Trujillo to be deemed authentically Dominican-American. Within these Trujillo narratives there seems to be two main ways to talk about resistance. “The resistance,” an organized entity that actively and consciously opposes the Trujillo regime, can be seen in stories like those told about the Mirabal sisters. The other resistance narrates how characters capitalize on opportunities to disrupt business or political functions, thus disrupting the Trujillo machine. This resistance works much like Ben Highmore's explanation of de Certeau's resistance in that “it limits flows and dissipates energies” (104). Characters from the socio-economic lower-class typically use this type of resistance because they are not recognized by nor allowed direct access to the regime. My thesis focuses on the latter type of resistance through my study of Angie Cruz's Let It Rain Coffee and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Both authors narrate instances of unrecognized resistance against Trujillo, but they also articulate modern resistance to economic, racial, and gender pressures, such as materialism and hyper-masculinity, through Trujillo narratives. While these narratives create a space for Dominican-Americans of different gender, class, and race, they also create Trujillo as a marker of Dominican literature, perpetuating the idea of Trujillo as inextricably connected to Dominican identity and obfuscating more complex issues of race and gender in Dominican culture.

The work presented aims to show the complexity, causes, and challenges of being stateless in the Dominican Republic through the medium of documentaries. This thesis will also uncoverpossibilities of resistance and coalitional engagement. To do so, I align myself with a decolonial feminist approach, which is a way of searching for alternative ways of being, doing, sensing, knowing, and loving for resistance, change, and a different future. This approach opens the possibility to understand statelessness within the triad of modernity/coloniality/decoloniality and to move beyond the Eurocentric inventions of human rights, the concept of citizenship, and the figure of the 'citizen'. Decolonial feminism also grapples with the problem of victimization and gives us a possibility to see stateless Dominicans of Haitian descent both as an oppressed and resistant community. In a phenomenological sense, the documentaries Stateless by Michèle Stephenson (2020) and Our Lives in Transit by Sofia Olins (2015), are used in this thesis to explain and explore the lived conditions of being stateless Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic. I am conscious that film studies and particularly documentary filmmaking are colonized spaces and tools of modernity to spread the white / Anglo male gaze through the films' very impact on our senses and perception. For this reason, the work presented delinks from traditional methodologies which are often taken for granted in social sciences and migration studies. I aim to achieve this goal by practicing decolonial feminism as a theory and methodological guide for this thesis. Consequently, this thesis is a bridge-making process and an exploration of methodologies to grasp the complex reality in the Dominican Republic by practicing this work as a researcher, an audience, and a resister. Through the inspiring work of black feminists, decolonial and Caribbean scholars, but most importantly the lived experiences and voices of stateless Dominicans of Haitian descent, I intend to argue statelessness as amodern form of genocide to explain its root causes and persistence. Then, I will support this argument by bridging the links between statelessness and the coloniality of gender. Lastly, the different "world"-traveling experiences of directors Michèle Stephenson and Sofia Olins will deepen the discussion around possibilities of resistance to ongoing modes of subjugation through decolonial feminism.

In this study, I examine the relationship between national origin, nativity status, and favorability toward Donald Trump among Latinos in 2016. In particular, I examine the relationship between Cubans, Dominicans, and "other" Latinos to understand how differences in national origin and nativity status influence Trump favorability. The term "Latino" is a pan-ethnic term used to describe individuals with ancestry from Latin America who share a common language, religion and culture. However, studies have shown that Latinos are actually more diverse and political attitudes may differ based on factors like acculturation, national origin, and nativity status. Using data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, I find that favorability for Trump differs by national origin and nativity status as immigrants of "other" national origins favor Trump than Cubans and Dominicans. This suggest that Latinos attitudes are not shaped by their pan-ethnic identity and are rather influenced by national origin and nativity status.

In the past, many measures have been taken in the Dominican Republic to address the functional outcomes of a school-aged child with a disability. However, none of these measures have explored or addressed function within context. Under the current paradigm used in the Dominican Republic, similar to the medical model, provision of therapy services in the Dominican Republic would be designed to remain outside of the educational context. The Centro de Atencion Integral Para la Discapacidad (CAID), a government initiative set by the first lady of the Dominican Republic and the Dominican Association of Rehabilitation (ADR), a pioneer non-profit organization, are the first organizations to offer comprehensive rehabilitative services and treatment for children with disabilities. The services delivery model used in the ADR removes the child from their natural school environment (M. Paniaguas, personal communication, July 17, 2014). This is further impacted by a lack of professional training to enable practitioners to treat children in context (M. Paniaguas, personal communication, July 17, 2014), making occupational therapy service provision (or any other related service) in schools virtually non-existent (M. Paniaguas, personal communication, July 17, 2014). Educational inclusion is presented as a goal. The availability of continuing professional education is presented as a solution to the problem. Many factors affecting the implementation of inclusion in developing countries are explored. The recommendation is given for a training/certificate program focused on the inclusion framework. The design is developed and catered to aid in enabling occupational therapists in the DR with skillsets in three major areas: standardized evaluations, service delivery, and ongoing staff development and training. Recommendations are to deliver the program through three one-week courses. The theory is that post-professional training closes gaps in the pediatric care of the Dominican Republic and shifts how occupational therapy services are delivered by Dominican occupational therapists in the Dominican Republic.

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The Dominican Republic (DR) and Haiti are two Caribbean countries that share the same island, Hispaniola, and a tumultuous history. Both countries' historical relationship is ridden with geopolitical conflict stemming from the DR creating an unwelcoming environment for Haitian immigrants. This dissertation is a interdisciplinary study that investigates how Dominican thinkers play a significant role in creating the intellectual impetus that encourages anti-Haitian sentiment throughout Dominican society in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. In this dissertation I examine how Dominican anti-Haitian ideals, as delineated by Dominican nationalist intellectuals, that I refer to as Defensive Dominican Nationalists (DDN), continue to resonate amongst "everyday" Dominicans and within the recently amended 2010 Dominican constitution that denies citizenship to Dominicans of Haitian descent in the aftermath of the earthquake. I conclude that although the new constitution reinforces the anti-Haitian ideals espoused by conservative Dominican elite thinkers, "everyday" Dominicans, in the post 2010 earthquake timeframe, rejected some of the DDN's beliefs concerning the true definition of Dominican-ness and how the Dominican government had recently amended its constitution. My methodology, consists of literary analysis, a survey, and focus group interviews conducted on both Dominicans and Haitians residing in the DR. Unexpectedly, I found that documented Haitians and second generation Dominicans of Haitian descent actually oppose the new influx of Haitian immigrants adopting some of the anti-Haitian attitudes of the DDN. In essence, this dissertation diagnoses a racial problem emanating from geopolitical conflict and the tumultuous history between Dominican and Haitian society. / African American Studies