The purpose of this research study was to analyze the success of the Peace Corps’ Municipal Development Program in its role as a change agent in the empowerment of rural Guatemalan women, and includes an exploration into the intercultural factors that may have affected the outcomes. I used my Peace Corps site of Santa Cruz El Chol, Guatemala as the case study for this research. I reviewed literature in five areas to use as a foundation to guide my research. This included literature regarding Guatemalan history and Guatemalan women’s issues, women’s empowerment in the international development context, Peace Corps, change agentry, and intercultural relations. I obtained data from four different groups. I interviewed a focus group of female leaders from El Chol, obtained questionnaires from 42 rural women from El Chol and its surrounding villages, interviewed three Peace Corps Guatemala staff members, and gathered surveys from 18 returned Peace Corps volunteers. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered via open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions, and scale-based questions. An analysis of the findings revealed implications in three areas. The first area focused on Guatemalan women who are especially vulnerable to institutional and domestic violence, which leads to a lack of educational and economic opportunities and continues to prevent their empowerment. Next, the Peace Corps volunteers were generally satisfied with their service, but felt traits of Guatemalan society and culture prevented them from positively influencing women’s empowerment. Additionally, findings revealed that Peace Corps volunteers served as change agents in that they saw themselves and were seen by others as positive role models for the Guatemalan women with whom they worked. Finally, time management styles, differences in perception of gender roles, and direct versus indirect communication styles sometimes clashed to cause issues in U. S. American and Guatemalan abilities to work effectively together.

This dissertation focuses on the representation of Ecuadorians in Spain between 2000 and 2015 in literature, film and the press. After enduring a decade of economic, climatic, and political problems, more than 175,000 Ecuadorians emigrated to Spain in 2001 alone (Herrera 2005). This process marked the beginning of a major migratory movement which has caused Spain to become a premier destination. The response to such migration has been disparate, yet both Ecuadorian and Spanish artists as well as the Spanish press have shown the different perspectives related to a discriminatory ideology. This dissertation focuses on three cultural products and three press articles which are analyzed using the theories of Critical Discourse Analysis developed by scholars Teun Van Dijk (1998, 1999, 2007, 2009) and Antonio Bañón Hernández (2002, 2003, 2006, 2008). On one hand, the dissertation examines the novels La utopía de Madrid (2013) by Carlos Carrión and Nunca pasa nada (2007) by José Ovejero, as well as the movie Prometeo deportado (2010) by Fernando Mieles; on the other, it focuses on three articles published in 1999, 2011, and 2014 respectively by El País, La Vanguardia, and El Mundo which present the Ecuadorian population as a main character. Finally, the conclusion provides an understanding of how the creation of these products has shaped an ideology in Spaniards’ minds throughout the years and what needs to be addressed in order to obtain equal social status among native and minority groups.

This work explores soundscape and histories of sound technologies as they relate to the formation of subjectivity. It proposes voice as a cultural practice and a means for theorizing one’s own subjectivity. What is modernity in sonic terms? What does it mean to listen deeply in an industrialized society? What does it mean to be a socialized listener, a revolutionized listener? How might voice be taken as an avatar of the self? How does the auditory realm allow for embodied theorizing that responds to systems of power and oppressed subjectivities?

This qualitative case study explores student, parent, and teacher perceptions of school racial climate and its impact on students’ academic and personal lives at a charter middle school in South Los Angeles. The study also explores teacher handling of the impact of racial tensions at this school with a majority Latin@ student enrollment and a predominantly Black teaching staff. School climate refers to the perceived quality of interpersonal interactions among teachers, students, staff, and parents. A positive school climate is associated with increased academic achievement and decreased disciplinary problems. Conversely, schools wrought with interethnic conflict or a poor racial climate divert focus and resources away from student learning and toward chronic disciplinary problems and teacher attrition. This case study demonstrates how Black administrators handled displacement by a large immigrant Latin@ population by instituting a system of Black privilege to protect political and economic space. The massive immigration of Latin@s offered a critical opportunity for coalition building with Blacks. However, a competition-based framework emerged, rendering this case study a microcosm of missed opportunity in South Los Angeles and beyond.

This thesis elucidates new perspectives on transnational migration. The analysis draws from three oral histories that recount border-crossings and their unique impact on Salvadoran immigrant self-realization. The oral histories presented refine the study of transnational migration by providing valuable qualitative information that supplements and nuances empirical fact. The first subject, whose story takes place in the 1970s just before the outbreak of the Salvadoran civil war, constructs identity through an embrace of assimilationist practices. The second narrative, occurring just after the civil war, is of a woman who navigates hegemonic Anglo structures by appropriating a space of her own. The third subject, a man who immigrates in the wake of post-9/11 heightened security concerns, desires permanent settlement; however, his undocumented status prevents him from fully integrating into American mainstream society. Additionally, an analytical focus on transnationalism reveals an important relationship with gendered identities. Through close analysis, these narratives reveal how Salvadoran immigrants have renegotiated what it means to belong in the United States. Overall this thesis contributes to a relatively young and undeveloped line of research on Salvadoran migration, particularly through its focus on gender.

Wandering Sagebrush is a collection of eight unified short stories. The main themes of the thesis include: the struggle of identity and how one finds the people and places to call family and home. The stories focus on family we make, family we lose, family we choose, and the decisions one makes in the name of family.

This dissertation analyzes six contemporary texts (2008–18) that represent indigenous Mexicans to transnational audiences. Despite being disparate in authorship, genre, and mode of presentation, all address the failings of the Mexican state discourse of mestizaje that exalts indigenous antiquities while obfuscating the racialized socioeconomic hierarchies that marginalize contemporary indigenous peoples. Casting this conflict synecdochally as the national imposing itself on quotidian life, the texts help the reader/viewer come to understand it in personal, affective terms. The audience is encouraged to identify with how it feels to exist in a space where, paradoxically, the interruption of everyday life has become the status quo. Questioning the status quo by appealing to international audiences, these texts form a contestatory current against state mestizaje within the same transnational networks of legitimation employed in the 19th and 20th centuries to promote it. In this way, the texts work to build political solidarity via affective means in order to promote and propagate in the popular discourse a questioning how the Mexican state apprehends its indigenous citizens. Ultimately, they seek more inclusive, representative governmental policies for indigenous peoples in Mexico without rejecting capitalist hegemony: they are articulating it against itself.

The purpose of this study was to explore the daily life of the younger generation of Mexican Americans through a phenomenology design. Specifically, in regard to how the culture-sharing pattern of biculturalism is reflected in their lives and the way they construct their bicultural identity. The study utilized rich qualitative data to paint a clear and descriptive picture of the internal process of biculturalism within eight Mexican American college students. Ultimately, the data analysis aimed to collect and reflect their voices and the stories. This was done through three distinct data methods that complemented each other: interviews (oral), photo elicitation (visual), and document analysis (written). Results indicate that, the way bicultural individuals organize and respond to their culture in terms of behavior and cognition, is independent from the feelings they experience while engaging in cultural frame switching. No matter how well the participants are able to organize their dual cultures and compartmentalize them in their life, they still struggle with conflicting and opposing feelings. Nonetheless, even though their cultures and ideologies can clash at times and feel contradictory, this young generation can still manage to respond and function in both cultures, but to varying degrees.

This thesis uses in-depth analysis of historical Los Angeles Times articles to trace the changing representations of the Latino community in the media. Focusing on themes of patriotism and citizenship, this thesis draws out the subtleties of syntax and semantics that silently influence public opinion. The Zoot Suit Riots and the Chicano Moratorium serve as the main historical backdrop, leading to a concluding exploration of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric surrounding immigration and the Latino community.

My study aims to reveal how ideologies, the way we perceive our world, what we believe, and our value judgments inextricably linked to a dominant discourse, have real and material consequences. In addition to explicating how these ideologies stem from a Western philosophical tradition, this thesis examines this thought-system alongside selections from Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek and Caramelo or Puro Cuento. My project reveals how Cisneros’ spatial narratives challenge ideologies concerning the border separating the United States and Mexico, which proves significant as the project of decolonization and understanding of identity formation is fundamentally tied to these geographical spaces. Through the main chapters in this thesis, it is proposed that Cisneros’ storytelling does not attempt to counter fixed ideas of spaces and identity or an alleged objective Truth and single History by presenting a true or better version, but offers alternative narratives as a form of resistance to dominant discourse.