This thesis offers an analytical discussion of contemporary fictional and autobiographical narratives by migrants who write in a language other than their mother tongue and/or grew up in a bilingual environment. While not all literature by ethnic minority writers is necessarily concerned with the experience of growing up in or living between cultures, the present study deals with those writers whose texts self-reflexively and counter-discursively seek to define and express individual identity at the interface of two or more cultures. The writers discussed not only move spatially between places but also shift emotionally and intellectually between different languages and cultures as well as literary texts from these cultures. The focus is on language and the literary text itself as it becomes the site for an interaction of cultural codes. The methodology adopted draws eclectically on theories which explore the space between" from anthropological, linguistic, post-colonial and feminist perspectives. The thesis examines different textual paradigms of countering dominant discourses as found in ten representative texts from Australia, Canada, Germany and the United States which have been chosen to cover a range of cultural experience. The texts discussed are: Angelika Fremd's Heartland and Josef Vondra's Paul Zwillinq; Caterina Edwards' The Lion's Mouth, Henry Kreisel's The Betrayal and Rachna Mara's Of Customs and Excise; Franco Biondi's Abschied der zerschellten Jahre: Novelle and Akif Pirincci's Tranen sind immer das Ende: Roman; Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language and Richard Rodriguez' Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. It is shown that self-reflexive negotiation of Self and Other in the text takes different forms depending on the writer's ethnic and racial background, his/her gender and the adopted country's social and political attitudes toward the newcomer. Re-writing, however, which is understood as an intentional, political dialogue with specific texts, is a recurrent counter-discursive strategy in the texts discussed. Finally, the thesis argues that the re-writing of traditional literary genres, such as Novelle, short story cycle, autobiography, Bildungs roman and quest novel, rather than of a particular text, as in other post-colonial contexts, is the most prevalent form of "writing back" in migrant literature. Texts written by migrants not only creatively revise literary conventions, challenge the concept of “national literature" and undermine canonically established categories, but also defeat attempts to approach a text with a single "appropriate" theory to reveal the strategies and the effects of cultural hybridity. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Unlike ethnies defined by genotype, religion or socio-cultural traits, ethno-linguistic groups require a structural basis that is territorial. Only in such a context can they exist and survive. The coexistence of three distinct ethno-linguistic groups - indigenous Germanophones and Ladins and recently-settled Italophones - in the South Tyrol is proof of this. This structural imperative stems from the societal changes of the last few centuries which made capitalist relations of production and statist institutions the dominant structural bases of social organization. The changes reshaped infrastructural mechanisms of social organization, their structured properties and the superstructural knowledge that guides human agency in instantiating such properties. The consequences for the South Tyrol and its peoples were their subordination to external centres. Under fascist rule this subordination created a bifurcated spatio-functional order which, under conditions of democratic rule and political autonomy, enabled the indigenous periphery or complementary region to assert its centrality vis-a-vis the territory's Italophone-controlled vital centre by using autonomous political institutions located in the same vital centre. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

For Filipino migrant workers , the journey overseas in search of contractual employment marks a profound turning point in their lives. It registers the crossing of spatial and cultural borders that leads to the shifting of terrains from which they make sense of their selves and the world of ‘others.’ It signifies a rupture in time that alters their sense of history, giving shape to new vantage points from which they reflect on the past and project an imagination of future. This research explores the question of how Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong make sense of their experiences as ‘migrant women’, and how they might articulate a consciousness of themselves as gendered subjects in history. The study begins with a documentation of the personal histories of five Filipina women, as told in their own words and as reconstructed into written text, and offers a reading of the narratives, tracing the ways in which they make sense of their experiences as women migrant workers, wives, mothers, daughters, and diasporic citizens of a nation state. Through this process of reading and narrativizing the life histories of Filipina domestic workers, this thesis hopes to contribute to an understanding of how their gendered subjectivities are formed, shaped and changed over time. The life histories, though diverse, give voice to a shared and collective experience – a familiar story of poverty, family crises, diaspora, encounter with cultural difference and subjection to difficult working conditions. Together they are the hidden threads that form the underside of the grand narratives of ‘nation’, development, modernization, and globalization. It is against this backdrop that family crises would push five women -- Mader Irma, Gina, Esther, Miriam, and Rosario -- to enter a particularly difficult type of employment which would render them as part of Hong Kong’s invisible ‘others.’ While their journey was primarily an act of love/duty to the family, the experience of migration would eventually reinvent the meaning of ‘wife’, ‘mother’‘daughter,’ ‘worker’ ‘subaltern intellectual’ and ‘activist.’ To foreground the narratives of life histories, two chapters in the first part of this thesis are devoted to a brief review of the historical contexts in Hong Kong and the Philippines that gave rise to the current migration phenomenon. The chapters also trace the ways by which the ‘Filipina domestic helper’ is positioned and interpellated in discourse, as ‘ban mui’, ‘new heroes’ and ‘spectral presences’ in the nation. Migrant domestic workers straddle two life/worlds, always the inside-outsider/outside-insider, and in this ambiguous in-between space they carve out new identities and struggle to exercise agency. This research contributes to an understanding of the affective/subjective dimensions of migration by presenting ways of ‘narrating’ and ‘reading’ women’s experiences. It also demonstrates the usefulness of intellectual resources offered by feminist and cultural studies in interrogating the conditions of Hong Kong’s ‘social others’ and identifying issues around which an agenda for transformational politics might be explored.

An understanding of how ethnicity is interpreted by the courts and tribunals of Canada is important for any theoretical conceptualisation of multiculturalism or any evaluation of multiculturalism policy implementation. This dissertation examines how ethnicity is defined in court judgments and what attributes were used to discuss it, and by whom? Specifically, this dissertation examines variations in the articulation and meaning of ethnicity since the term first appeared in Canadian case law in 1955. For the years 1950 and 2009, a search of the term "ethnicity" (ETHNIC*) in the Canadian Legal Information Institute database of cases revealed an astounding 2,358 federal-court and tribunal judgments/cases. For the purposes of this research, the number of cases was reduced to only 36 cases and 46 text segments, with the reference to ethnicity and examined via a qualitative "discourse analysis" technique. The dissertation applies a Bourdieusian theoretical framework postulating that ethnicity, which is an important ingredient of Canadian multiculturalism, is shaped in relation to power and meaning. The sample revealed a nuanced multiplicity of discursive effects in juridical language, underlining the use of the concept of ethnicity. It highlights some aspects of the "excluding" dynamics of the concept of ethnicity in case law for the time period studied. It appears that when adjudicating cases where ethnicity is implied, judges were inclined to equate ethnicity with skin colour, ancestry, and regional location. Applying the sociology of the law to my empirical research results suggests that legal professionals may articulate ethnicity in such a way that a particular conceptualization is rendered legitimate. Within the limits of my sample, such a process of rendering ethnicity as legitimate often meant that the scientific knowledge and experience of others was disregarded. Furthermore, my empirical analysis suggests that even if the meaning of ethnicity in judgments was influenced by the ideology of multiculturalism, the influence, if viewed through the notion of ethnicity, was normative and prescriptive until 2009. By revealing the decision-making process associated with adjudicating the cases where ethnicity is mentioned, this dissertation offers a better understanding of how Canadian courts and tribunals understood ethnicity from 1955 to 2009. This is the dissertation's main contribution to the advancement of knowledge.

Now, there are more options than ever for racial identity. Identities such as Black, White, Native, Asian, and Latino have put into contention how past racial boundaries and definitions interact with newer racial color lines. Racial passing is one concept that captures both older and newer forms of identity maintenance. Racial passing refers to when a person classified as a member of a racial group is accepted or perceived as a member of another. In this thesis, I review the literature on racial passing to understand its history and theoretical explanations. Based on the review, I examine a convenience sample of research participants to examine their views on racial passing, if they believe claims of white-passing black people claiming blackness, and their opinions on the consequences or benefits of white-passing black people choosing to claim blackness or whiteness. I utilize qualitative methods to understand the participant's perceptions of racial passing. The analyses yielded several themes, including results of white passers' claims of blackness being believed if people believed they were claiming blackness for the right reasons and that people generally understood material reasons for white passers claiming whiteness. The themes support previous racial passing literature findings and provide insights into how racial identity continues to be fluid and ever-changing.

In the wake of the renewed sense of powerlessness felt in the Black community, "The Talk" (Snell,2016) is primarily considered an essential rite of passage in Black families in preparing Black children how to engage with police when faced with microaggressions of racism. The awareness that the rules are different based on the color of your skin reinforces the narrative that for Blacks, most will face law enforcement that functions to protect and serve Whiteness (Burton, 2015). The purpose of this research was to examine the cultural significance of Racial Socialization and the use of "The Talk" within the Black family as a tool to address the effects of systemic racism within law enforcement. specifically, interactions between Black youth and the police. Through the lens of critical race theory, racial socialization, and discourse analysis, the research will answer (1) In what ways is Black socialized racial behavior demonstrated by Blacks when interacting with law enforcement? (2) What is the cultural significance of "The Talk" within the Black Family? (3) Is it time for "The Talk" to move from being pre-emptive to a solution-based tool? Through qualitative research, specific constructs and attributes of each theory will be used to interpret meanings, concepts, behaviors, and attitudes of awareness on the use of The Talk and how the social capital of the Black family, Black socialization of racial behavior, the impact of gender and race and exposure to racism influence these interpretations. Participants of the study included: Black parents of Black children, Black children ages 10-17, and Black adult drivers. The current research addresses the need for the use of The Talk as a pre-emptive tool to address crucial issues of racism and discrimination between the Black community and law enforcement. In addition, this study has expanded on the current research and focused on the more difficult question of why the use of "The Talk" has not moved into a more solution-based versus a pre-emptive response. As a solution-based response, The Talk is guided by how to stop, not just anticipate, and mitigate, these problems—shifting the focus to finding solutions to eliminate the perceived threat felt by both the police and Blacks from each other. Further questioning: If "The Talks" fails to shift into a more solution-based response, will it become the catalyst of the same evils "The Talk" was created to avoid?

Amid the 2020 call to action to expand the sociological canon, sociologists have been encouraged to engage the contributions of diverse theorists in their courses. Extant research on graduate-level classical theory courses has explored the absence of early women theorists from these courses at elite institutions. This dissertation advanced the literature by 1) analyzing the diffusion of classical Black women theorists in graduate-level classical theory syllabi, 2) analyzing the discursive constructions of classical theorists in the syllabi, and 3) investigating the factors that influenced which classical theorists are included in these courses. Data consisted of 50 graduate classical theory syllabi from doctoral-granting institutions and in-depth qualitative interviews with 10 faculty members who teach the courses. The findings demonstrate that Black women do not have the same representation as other groups in these courses. Additionally, a critical discourse analysis revealed that theorists were constructed as Hierarchical – which valued a small collection of theorists – or Corrective – which valued the contributions of diverse theorists, including Black women. Interview data revealed that faculty developed their classical theory courses using materials from their graduate training, and research expectations limited the time they had to engage with unfamiliar theorists. Faculty were encouraged by graduate students to include diverse theorists, although some expressed concerns about including diverse theorists meaningfully. This study illustrates that systemic gendered racism underscores how classical Black women theorists are conceptualized and that their scholarship is not valued as a form of cultural capital that will translate into social mobility for graduate students

In 2019, for the first time in history, Miss America, Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss Universe were all Black women. However, in Texas pageantry, where 12 former state titleholders have become Miss America or Miss USA are from, racial representation is scant. Since their inception in 1937 and 1952, only three Black women have won title of Miss Texas America and two Black women have been crowned Miss Texas USA. This study analyzes the motives for competing in Texas beauty pageants, experiences of preparing and competing, and the perceptions of race and racial inequalities among racially and ethnically diverse contestants and titleholders in two mainstream pageant circuits in Texas, Miss Texas America and Miss Texas USA. Data consist of semi-structured in-depth interviews with a sample of 37 beauty pageant contestants from the state of Texas, including former Miss Texas titleholders. Interviews focused on participants' experiences preparing and competing in beauty pageants, their motives for competing, their perceptions of race and racial inequalities in pageants, and their views on how race operates within the current system. Findings revealed significant patterns in participants' motives for competing, preparation for competitions, and perceptions of race within pageantry. The main findings of this study suggest that Black participants' motives to compete were often more focused on collective goals (e.g., serving as role models for other Black girls) whereas white and Hispanic participants' motives were more individualistic (e.g., personal growth), managing racial embodiment by training or undoing certain aspects of their identity (e.g., accent) and features such as negotiating their hair textures and styles to meet dominant white aesthetics, and differences observed among contestant preparation based on the pageant circuit they compete in (e.g., the bikini line). This research aims to add to the already scant literature on how race operations within the current system in Western beauty pageants especially in the era of the Black Lives Matter movement.

This study analyzed how the most partisan cable news networks, FOX News and MSNBC, framed victims and officers in their coverage of cases where officers murder Black victims. In addition, this work investigated how these networks discussed systemic racism within their reports. Using Feagin's white racial frame as a framework, the findings suggest that both networks exhibited anti-black and pro-white framing within their reports, although the frequency and the severity varied across networks. Results also show when counter framing was present, MSNBC still perpetuated the anti-black and pro-white frames. These results have implications for how media should improve their coverage of these cases to prevent the spread of harmful ideologies to their audiences.

Historically, the Black church has been seen as the leader in the movement for racial progress and civil rights in the United States. On the other hand, White churches have largely been seen as perpetuators of racial oppression undergirded by a theology which supports liberation of the soul and subjugation of the body. What then is the role of multi-racial churches? These churches have the unique ability to bridge the difference between Black and White churches and help bring about progress for non-Whites. However, questions have been raised by past research, which implies that multi-racial churches may in fact reproduce the status quo. Accordingly, this dissertation seeks to understand if and how such churches 1) produce and reproduce racial ideology and 2) how organizational practices contribute to the problem. To answer my research questions, I conducted a study which included participant observation, content analysis, and an interview sample of 21. The data was collected at Without Walls Church (WWC), a multi-racial and multi-site church located in south Florida. My findings indicate that church leaders, staff, and volunteers of all races utilize all the frames and many of the styles of color-blind ideology, thereby reproducing the dominant racial ideology. Furthermore, WWC developed additional socio-theological colorblind frames that minimize social justice as a counter frame. Finally, although WWC celebrates its diversity, research found that WWC is a racialized organization which restricts agency of Blacks and distributes resources in ways that suit the interests of Whites through organizational practices. However, the murder of George Floyd, Jr. may have served as an external source of change, challenging the ways in which WWC reproduces the dominant racial ideology.