The Cultural Production of the Modern Program Evaluator in Education is a three-year critical ethnographic investigation of the identity production of program evaluators in education. The methodological approach, grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis and analytic induction, includes: 1) open-ended interviews with 20 program evaluators, 2) of which 3 were expanded into case studies, 3) numerous email exchanges, 4) personal reflections from 16 years as a professional program evaluator, 5) field notes and 6) document analysis. Using Holland et al.’s (1998) social practice theory of self and identity, this dissertation outlines the processes, identifies the cultural tools, and provides a concise political-economic history that depicts how social scientists become program evaluators. The goal of this project was to study identity production through discourses and everyday cultural practices as a way to understand how social scientists come to accept, embody, and become passionate about the figured world of contract program evaluation. This includes drawing upon and contributing to existing meaning structures and systems of privilege. The study includes detailed case studies of program evaluators’ agentic day-to-day responses to a shifting political economic landscape and competing ideological purposes for conducting evaluations. / text

Using data collected in the Icelandic community of Manitoba in the summer of 1985, this thesis outlines an alternative approach to the understanding of ethnicity in North America through analysis of the Icelandic Festival held each summer in Gimli, Manitoba. The Festival provides an entree through which the dynamics of the production, reproduction and transformation of West Icelandic identity are revealed. It is argued that when ethnic identity is conceived as being resident in the possession of particular attributes or characteristics, change becomes a threat to the continued existence of the ethnic group. As defined in this thesis, ethnic identity is an ideological representation of social relations which is contextualized in a particular historic formation. It involves a constant negotiation of the symbolic representation of identity through social interaction, and is contingent upon the consequences of these actions. Change, therefore, is a normal process of ethnicity which does not necessarily end in assimilation. Though the content of identity changes according to changing circumstances, it must retain the appearance of an "authentic" representation of the past. The Festival is a location of the political negotiation of Icelandic identity, as seen in the debates which exist in the community regarding the relevance of its Icelandic cultural content. It is argued that, while the Festival continues to address a public image of how the organizers believe the community should be perceived by the larger society, it is also a time when a private celebration takes place. This latter aspect of the Festival is where the perpetuation of the meaningfulness of Icelandic identity occurs. It is contained within the family reunions which take place during the Festival and the return to a sense of the past which is linked to a shared West Icelandic history. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

Racial Queer is a qualitative study of Multiracial college students with a critical ethnographic component. The design methods, grounded in Critical Race Methodology and Feminist Thought (both theories that inform Critical Ethnography), include: 1) 25 semi-structured interviews of Multiracial students, 2) of which 5 were expanded into case studies, 3) 3 focus groups, 4) observations of the sole registered student organization for Multiracial students on Central University’s campus, 5) field notes and 6) document analysis. The dissertation examines the following question: How do Multiracial students understand and experience their racialized identities within a large, public, tier-one research university in Texas? In addition, it addresses the following sub-questions: How do Multiracial students experience their racialized identities in their everyday interactions with others, in relation to their own self-perceptions and in response to the way others perceive them to be? How do Multiracial students’ positionalities, as they relate to power, privilege, phenotype and status, guide their behavior in different contexts and situations? Using Holland et al.’s (1998) social practice theory of self and identity, Chicana Feminist Theory, and tenets of Queer Theory, this study illustrates how Multiracial college students utilize agency as racial queers to construct and negotiate their identities within a context where identity is both self-constructed and produced for them. I introduce the term, racial queer, to frame the unconventional space of the Multiracial individual. I use this term not to convey sexuality, but to convey the parallels of queerness (both as a term of empowerment and derogation) as they pertain to being Multiracial. In other words, queerness denotes a unique individuality as well as a deviation from the norm (Sullivan, 2003; Warner, 1993; Gamson, 2000). The primary purpose of this study is to illustrate the agentic ways in which Multiracial college students come to understand and experience the complexity of their racialized identity production. Preliminary findings suggest the need to expand the scope of racial discourses to include Multiracial experiences and for further study of Multiracial students. Their counter-narratives access an otherwise invisible student population, providing an opportunity to broaden critical discourses around education and race. / text

In this exploratory thesis project, I consider what emerging approaches we can take as social scientists to showcase and critically engage self-representations of diasporic individuals, who often lack visibility and legibility within the dominant cultural archive. Filmmaking as a social research practice can provide rich audiovisual data, physical and social access to materials for nonacademics, and opportunities to document and share subjects' comments and settings without the limitations of transcription. This is especially salient in the emerging media landscape of Web 2.0, where digital communications technology applications (such as Facebook, Skype, and Snapchat) are accessible by a global audience, and can act as tools for cultural identity production by diasporic individuals. This project documents the experiences of several first- and second-generation Bangladeshi American immigrants in relation to digital communications technology advances within the past decade, for the purposes of collecting and sharing stories of diasporic individuals, offering a venue for self-expression through empathetic interviewing and collaborative oral history methods, and contributing to the American cultural archive in the context of emerging media and academic landscapes. The full project is comprised of this text document, alongside a short documentary film containing portions of audiovisual data from interviews which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh9puazpdrw. / Master of Science