Testimony flows from a story that originates long before the opportunity to be a witness about human atrocities occurs. And, ironically, testimony – the voice that is suppressed during times of state sanctioned terror – continues to flow long after the perpetrators fade from power. It is this ethereal and enduring paradox that raises the questions of what testimonial forms are, how they communicate, and whether they positively impact social justice as evidenced by enhanced communicative freedoms. The testimonial forms of this study are narratives about human rights atrocities which emerged from the 17-year military junta in Chile led by Augusto Pinochet. This project examines the development and uses of official and unofficial testimony surrounding times of transitional justice using a multi-modal analysis incorporating narrative and historical analysis, communication ethics, and critical theory which yields a meta-analysis of testimony and the context in which it functions. This research concludes that a life cycle of testimony exists that is organic and evolving. Furthermore, due to the unique circumstances of transitional justice periods, a theory of testimony ethics is called for to increase individual communicative freedoms that lead to enhanced social justice as well as to increase the success of truth commission communication processes.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Curriculum and Instruction / Kay Ann Taylor / This qualitative case study examined how the intersection of gender, ethnicity, and college experiences affected five Latina undergraduate students' academic persistence in a predominately White, Research Extensive Midwestern State University. Latinas' gender, race, ethnicity, and college experiences influence their educational achievements directly. Because most research concentrates on understanding Latinas' educational experiences from a cultural deficit perspective, this research addressed the need to investigate Latinas' personal understanding of the challenges they face in college and their responses and coping strategies utilized to navigate their experiences and persist academically. Cultural Congruity was the theoretical framework for analysis and interpretation in this study because it contextualized the understanding of Latinas' culture of origin and its values in relation to the cultural values upheld by the university Latinas attend. The research utilized life narratives to understand the meaning the participants gave to their college experiences. Life narratives invent, reform, and refashion personal and collective identity for underrepresented people. Life narratives provided direct access to accounts of participants' lived experiences while identifying the ideologies and beliefs shaped by those experiences. The findings in this study identified the stereotypes, racism, obstacles, and support encountered by Latinas in college and at home. Further findings include: Impact and relevance that caring relationships and high expectations had on their academic persistence, Latinas' determination to be involved in college and give back to their parents and communities, and how academic effectiveness acted as a form of resistance for Latinas' college persistence. Four additional themes emerged: How self-efficacy was used by Latinas to redefine themselves in college, the changing effect that intellectually stimulating courses had on Latinas in college, their tenacity to succeed, and Latinas' identification of their fathers as feminist role models. Recommendations for practice and future research are addressed. The results contribute to the limited research on Latinas' persistence in higher education and the personal meaning that they give to the obstacles and support they encounter in college. Further, the findings defy the stereotypes attributed frequently to Latinas.

The goal of this research is to examine how zines--self-published alternative magazines that are part of Do It Yourself (DIY) independent media scenes-- are used to assert subjectivities. This research examines the entire bodies of work of five zinesters. It situates the work in New Literacy Studies, narrative research, and other zine scholarship. By exploring zinesters' works as they use it to perform literacy over time, this research redefines zines. It moves zines away from being seen as simply a way for young women to be active cultural producers and situates zines in autobiographical writing where life narratives are created and recreated as zinesters perform differing subjectivities over time. Through narrative analysis, this research looks at the following five zinesters and the subjectivities they perform at different stages in their zine career. Cindy Crabb creates a confessional space within her zines to tell secrets and stories around her body: specifically survivor narratives. Alex Wrekk positions herself as part of the punk scene and transforms her personal identity as she participates in the zine and punk scenes. Kelly Shortandqueer asserts transgender subject positions throughout his zines and the writing of his transnarrative. Lauren Martin creates autographic zines through her artist subjectivity. Davida Breier shares small stories throughout her zines, as is exemplified in her Intros. The results of this work allows for exploration into zines as a cultural literacy practice. More importantly, it examines and defines zines as life-long literacies--those literacy sites that people choose to participate within during varying times of their lives and not only during specific situational occurrences such as school or work--and zine creators as permanent writers. Zines allow a better understanding of what it means to perform literacy work in meaningful ways which permit participants to examine and reexamine, define and redefine, and construct and reconstruct subjectivities as they move through time and various social, cultural, and personal scenes. / Urban Education

The purpose of the study has been, by adopting a view of life and a learning perspective, to reach an understanding of the way in which cancer patients in a palliative care context understand and cope with their existential life situation. I asked the following questions: 1) How does their personal view of life influence the patients’ understanding and coping with the illness and existential life situation? 2) What existential questions are central to the patients? 3) What is personal learning all about? 4) What prerequisites are important for fostering the patients’ personal learning? Interviews focusing on narratives were conducted with ten patients who have an incurable cancer disease. The interviews were taped and transcribed into texts. A hermeneutic method was applied to understand the content and import of the patients’ narratives. The results show that the patients achieve closure, which involves them making reassessments, adapting their life to the illness, being reconciled with themselves and with their relation to their surroundings. It is also about them wishing to bequeath a legacy and hand down desirable qualities, values and merits for future generations. Taking this view of life as their basis, the patients interpret their illness, existential questions and life situation, and structure their existence so as to make it comprehensible and meaningful. Life narratives can serve as a tool in enabling caregivers to identify patients’ existential questions, view of life, learning requirements and the way they make sense of things (”meaning-making”). By means of view of life support counselling caregivers can identify the patients’ personal ideas, values and support their needs. The patients can reach an awareness of their personal view of life. Reappraising and developing this can be viewed as a form of perspective shift or learning.

Esta pesquisa discute a multiplicidade de discursos sobre a identidade das mulheres nikkeis no Brasil pela perspectiva do jornalismo produzido na comunidade de imigrantes japoneses e descendentes. Para a análise foram utilizados o suplemento Página Um, a revista Arigatô e o tablóide Japão Agora, por apresentarem reportagens em português que contrariaram alguns estereótipos da mulher japonesa e nikkei. Apesar de serem exceções ao discurso hegemônico que louvava a mulher nipônica abnegada e submissa, as matérias revelam a possibilidade de questionamento desse imaginário dentro do jornalismo nipo-brasileiro. Outro recurso para a realização do estudo foi a obtenção dos depoimentos de mulheres jornalistas da imprensa nipo-brasileira por meio da técnica de pesquisa dos relatos de vida. Nos relatos de vida as entrevistadas expressaram sua relação com a profissão e a influência de fatores como origens familiares, identidade étnica e gênero. As reportagens e os relatos de vida das jornalistas mostram as contradições entre o imaginário sobre as mulheres japonesas e nikkeis e suas condições concretas da vida. O objetivo foi estabelecer como as autoras e protagonistas de reportagens desafiaram a desumanização a partir do que Agnes Heller chamou de \"condução de vida\", ou seja, uma forma própria de apropriar-se da realidade a partir de sua individualidade, impondo a ela a marca de sua personalidade. É possível perceber a existência de manipulações para naturalizar os papéis atribuídos às mulheres e as estratégias femininas para conviver com os sistemas de preconceitos que impedem a conquista da autonomia e da cidadania. / This research discusses multiplicity of discourses on Nikkei women\'s identity from perspective of journalism produced by community of Japanese immigrants and descendants in Brazil. It was used for analysis the supplement Página Um, the magazine Arigatô and the tabloid Japão Agora because of reports in Portuguese that contradicted some stereotypes of Japanese and Nikkei women. Although these are exceptions to the hegemonic discourse praising Japanese woman as selfless and submissive, the materials have revealed the possibility of questioning that imagery inside Japan-Brazilian journalism. Another resource for the study was to obtain testimonies of women journalists in Japan-Brazil press through the research technique of life narratives. The interviewees have expressed their relationship with the profession and the influence of factors such as family background, ethnic identity and gender. The reports and the life narratives of the journalists have showed contradictions between the imagery on the Nikkei and Japanese women and their real life conditions . The objective was to establish how the authors and protagonists of news reports challenged dehumanization as Agnes Heller calls \"conduct of life\", in other words, a proper way of appropriating reality from their individuality by imposing the mark of their personality. It was possible to perceive existence of manipulation to naturalize roles assigned to women and women\'s strategies to live with systems of prejudice that prevent achievement of autonomy and citizenship.

This dissertation examines contemporary Iraqi North American women’s life narratives within the frame of postcolonial autobiography theory. Through narrating their experiences of oppression, war, and displacement these women reveal the fragmentation of identity that occurs under such unsettling situations. However, I argue that in the course of narrating their stories and in spite of the fragmentation they suffer, these women are able to establish selves that distinguish and recover from fragmentation and loss through a process I term defragmentation. They are able to defragment their identities by reconstructing unique selves through the act of life narration, through relational remembering, and finally by resisting patriarchal and Western influences on how they perceive themselves and their experiences. Thus they are able to defragment their sense of disjointedness and reaffirm their sense of Iraqiness, even in the diaspora. This study explores the major causes of fragmentation in the work, which are divided into trauma and displacement. Unlike the studies and statistics that political approaches and media coverage have provided, these works shed light on the disruptions caused by war, oppression, separation from loved ones, and exile in the daily lives of these narrators or the lives of their friends and relatives. Therefore, in addition to the new identity that these women create in order to cope with their new lives in the West, they also construct a hybrid identity that is capable of recollecting and narrating these traumatic experiences. Within the space of hybridity, Iraqi North American women have to deal with vast differences between Western and Middle Eastern cultures; the transformation entails not just a change of place but an acceptance or understanding of a new culture, a new religion, and a new identity. The struggle of settlement, or re-settlement, becomes that of establishing an identity that does reflect the stereotypical images of Middle Eastern women in Western perceptions and a struggle to maintain selves that can contain both the past life and the present in what can be considered a third space. Although the main topic of this dissertation is defragmentation in the life narrations of Iraqi North American women, this study also covers the cultural and political history of Arabs in general, and of Iraqis specifically. There are also references to the migrations of Arabs to North America and a brief background of the roots of Arab North American literature. These topics will be discussed in order to provide an understanding of the histories from which these women, or their families, have migrated and their positions within Western culture and scholarship. In addition, this approach provides an insight into the complexities of these women’s identities that reflect multi-layered affiliations, interests, and cultures. The works chosen for this study include written and oral life narratives by Iraqi North American women who write from Canada and the United States. These works are Zaineb Salbi’s Between Two Worlds: Escape From Tyranny: Growing Up in the Shadow of Saddam (2005), Dunya Mikhail’s A Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (2009) and a National Film Board documentary titled Baghdad Twist (2007), by Jewish Iraqi Canadian Joe Balass. In the documentary, Joe Balass interviews his mother, Valentine Balass, as she recounts growing up in Iraq and later experiencing exile from her homeland. The final work I address is The Orange Trees of Baghdad: In Search of My Lost Family (2007) by Leilah Nadir, a Canadian born Iraqi writer. Through her memoir Nadir tries to reconnect with her father’s family in Iraq while uncovering their traumatic experiences of the Gulf War. The narrators in my research belong to different social classes, age groups, and practice different religions, but they all identify themselves as Iraqi women. These women, through their interpretations of living life between two (or more) cultures, offer important perspectives not only on their own ethnic society, but also on the role of ethnic women in North American society in general. There has been a massive increase in the migration of Iraqi women to North America in the last thirty years; their perspectives on political, social, and religious changes are an important part of understanding the experiences of this ethnic group. Through their life narratives, these women are able to display their unique selves by portraying their ability to contest the boundaries and limitations of borders and societies that try to eliminate one identity or the other.

Esta pesquisa discute a multiplicidade de discursos sobre a identidade das mulheres nikkeis no Brasil pela perspectiva do jornalismo produzido na comunidade de imigrantes japoneses e descendentes. Para a análise foram utilizados o suplemento Página Um, a revista Arigatô e o tablóide Japão Agora, por apresentarem reportagens em português que contrariaram alguns estereótipos da mulher japonesa e nikkei. Apesar de serem exceções ao discurso hegemônico que louvava a mulher nipônica abnegada e submissa, as matérias revelam a possibilidade de questionamento desse imaginário dentro do jornalismo nipo-brasileiro. Outro recurso para a realização do estudo foi a obtenção dos depoimentos de mulheres jornalistas da imprensa nipo-brasileira por meio da técnica de pesquisa dos relatos de vida. Nos relatos de vida as entrevistadas expressaram sua relação com a profissão e a influência de fatores como origens familiares, identidade étnica e gênero. As reportagens e os relatos de vida das jornalistas mostram as contradições entre o imaginário sobre as mulheres japonesas e nikkeis e suas condições concretas da vida. O objetivo foi estabelecer como as autoras e protagonistas de reportagens desafiaram a desumanização a partir do que Agnes Heller chamou de \"condução de vida\", ou seja, uma forma própria de apropriar-se da realidade a partir de sua individualidade, impondo a ela a marca de sua personalidade. É possível perceber a existência de manipulações para naturalizar os papéis atribuídos às mulheres e as estratégias femininas para conviver com os sistemas de preconceitos que impedem a conquista da autonomia e da cidadania. / This research discusses multiplicity of discourses on Nikkei women\'s identity from perspective of journalism produced by community of Japanese immigrants and descendants in Brazil. It was used for analysis the supplement Página Um, the magazine Arigatô and the tabloid Japão Agora because of reports in Portuguese that contradicted some stereotypes of Japanese and Nikkei women. Although these are exceptions to the hegemonic discourse praising Japanese woman as selfless and submissive, the materials have revealed the possibility of questioning that imagery inside Japan-Brazilian journalism. Another resource for the study was to obtain testimonies of women journalists in Japan-Brazil press through the research technique of life narratives. The interviewees have expressed their relationship with the profession and the influence of factors such as family background, ethnic identity and gender. The reports and the life narratives of the journalists have showed contradictions between the imagery on the Nikkei and Japanese women and their real life conditions . The objective was to establish how the authors and protagonists of news reports challenged dehumanization as Agnes Heller calls \"conduct of life\", in other words, a proper way of appropriating reality from their individuality by imposing the mark of their personality. It was possible to perceive existence of manipulation to naturalize roles assigned to women and women\'s strategies to live with systems of prejudice that prevent achievement of autonomy and citizenship.

Nombre de recherches portent sur la question de l’abandon de la délinquance et du processus de désistance qui la précède. Bien que les angles d’approche soient diversifiés, elles s’entendent pour dire que ce processus implique des changements sociaux autant que personnels. Ce mémoire s’est intéressé à la question des changements identitaires chez des individus qui avaient été condamnés à une longue peine d’emprisonnement et qui ont obtenu leur libération conditionnelle totale. Le principal objectif de ce mémoire est de comprendre en quoi les aspects permanents de l’identité et ceux qui sont modifiables sont à l’œuvre dans la trajectoire de changement d’un homme condamné à perpétuité pour meurtre et qui a obtenu sa libération conditionnelle totale. La méthode qualitative qu’est le récit de vie, et selon une perspective phénoménologique, a été utilisée afin d’atteindre les objectifs de cette recherche. Un homme condamné à une sentence de prison à vie, mais ayant obtenu sa libération totale a été rencontré en dix entretiens en profondeur d’une durée d’une heure à une heure et demie. Nous avons choisi de procéder à un nombre élevé d’entretiens de type semi-directifs afin de permettre l’approfondissement des propos de l’individu rencontré. Les résultats suggèrent que certaines représentations de l’identité restent stables dans le temps alors que d’autres se transforment au fil de la trajectoire de vie. En effet, de l’analyse du récit de vie de l’individu se dégagent deux représentations stables, qui marquent durablement l’identité de ce dernier dans sa trajectoire de vie, et quatre modifiables, qui se sont développées au cours de sa détention. Les résultats montrent aussi que les représentations stables semblent intervenir autant dans le processus criminogène que dans celui de la désistance. / Numerous studies have focused on the issues of abandonment of crime and the desistance process that precedes it. While the approaches retained are diversified, they all point to the social as well as personal changes the process implies. This thesis focuses on the identity changes of an individual who received a long prison sentence, and who later obtained a full parole. The main objective of this thesis is to understand what are the permanent aspects of identity and those that are modifiable at work in the changing path of a man sentenced for murder and has obtained full parole. The life approach, and in a phenomenological perspective, was used to achieve the objectives of this research. A man sentenced to a life prison and who later obtained his total release was met for ten in-depth interviews each lasting between an hour and an hour and a half. Such a large number of semi-structured type interviews allowed us to deepen our understanding. The results suggest that certain representations of identity remain stable over time while others change over the life course. Indeed, from the analysis of the individual's life story two stable representations emerged that permanently mark his identity during his life trajectory, and four modifiable, which developed during his detention. The results also show that stable representations appear to be involved in both the criminogenic process and during his desistance.