This dissertation analyzes the life of Czech traveler Čeněk Paclt (1813 - 1887), who was born in the town of Turnov. Čeněk Paclt belongs to the most famous Czech travelers. He is also the first Czech, who has provably traveled through all five inhabited continents and has left written evidence about his journeys. Fundamental part of this thesis is focusing on his life and describes his adventures, which he had come across on the five continents. The thesis is written in historical, and employs historical anthropology, which focuses on a single individual in the course of human events, as one of the main methodological approaches. Secondarily, this thesis elaborates Paclt's personality and his view on aboriginal cultures, which he encountered during his travels, and Paclt's relationship towards his hometown is also mentioned. Furthermore, the dissertation touches upon traveling background in Czech nation during 19th century.

The dropout rate for first-generation Mexican Americans students in American schools has increased in the past decade. The purpose of this study, as reflected in the central research question, was to explore the factors that influenced the decision of first-generation Mexican American students to transition to high school or drop out after Grade 8. The research design was a phenomenological case study. The conceptual framework was based on current research surrounding first-generation Mexican American student dropout questions. In addition, how the concepts of family and community involvement and relationships between the home and school have an impact on the first generation Mexican American dropout rate. Participants were 10 first-generation Mexican Americans between the ages of 18-24, who either dropped out of school at the end of Grade 8 or completed high school. Data was collected from multiple interviews with participants. Data analysis involved coding, categorization, and analysis of themes and discrepant data. Factors that influenced students' decisions to stay in school or drop out included lack of support at home, lack of support at school, and financial needs. This study contributes to positive social change because educators may develop a deeper understanding about how to prevent first-generation Mexican American students from dropping out of school. In helping these students to graduate from high school, educators will assist these students in developing educational and employment goals that will confidently lead them to lives that are more productive.

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This dissertation argues that spiritual and religious worldviews (i.e. Mexican Catholicism, indigenous spiritualities, and popular religion) have historically intersected with social and political realities in the development of Mexican origin communities of the United States. More specifically, as creative writers from these communities have endeavored to express and represent Mexican American experience, they have consistently engaged these intersections of the spiritual and the material. While Chicano/a criticism has often overlooked, and in some ways dismissed, the significant role which spiritual and religious discourses have played in the political development of Mexican American communities, I examine how the works of creative writers pose important questions about the role of religious faith and spirituality in healing the wounds of social violence. By placing literary texts in conversation with scholarship from multiple disciplines, this project links literary narratives to their historical, social, and political frameworks, and ultimately endeavors to situate literary production as an expressive cultural product. Historical and regional in approach, the dissertation examines diverse literary narratives penned by writers of Mexican descent between the 1930s and the current decade. Selected textual pairings recall pivotal moments and relations in the history of Mexico, America, and their shared geographical borderlands. Through the lens of religion and spirituality, a broad array of social discourses emerges, including: gender and sexuality, landscape and memory, nation-formation, race and ethnicity, popular traditions, and material culture. / text

In this report I analyze both historical and contemporary urban planning policies enacted by the City of Austin, TX, through which I establish patterns of structural inequality affecting working class communities of color residing in East Austin. I examine early 20th-century urban beautification initiatives, along with the Progressive era segregationist project of the modern city. Austin city planners solidified segregation along racial lines with the 1928 Master Plan, which mandated the systematic displacement and relocation of African American and Mexican American communities to Austin’s Eastside, along with all “objectionable industries.” Today, East Austin working class communities of color continue to experience unequal burdens of environmentally hazardous industry in their neighborhoods. I examine initiatives implemented by the local grassroots environmental justice organization PODER and their fight for the health and safety of East Austin residents of color in combination with their protest against gentrifying urban planning policies and practices. Through an analysis of the PODER Young Scholars for Justice documentary, Gentrification: An Eastside Story, I look at the ways in which gentrification has changed the East Austin urban cultural landscape. This report aims to shed light upon spatial and racial social geographies that have contributed to the nearly century long battle East Austin residents have waged against discriminatory urban planning policies resulting in educational segregation, environmentally racist industrial zoning, and contemporary displacement of working class communities of color for city profit. / text

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The work examines the antislavery writings of Francis Wayland (1796-1865). Wayland pastored churches in Boston and Providence, but he left his indelible mark as the fourth and twenty-eight year president of Brown University (1827-1855). The author of numerous works on moral science, economics, philosophy, education, and the Baptist denomination, his administration marked a transitional stage in the emergence of American colleges from a classically oriented curriculum to an educational philosophy based on science and modern languages. Wayland left an enduring legacy at Brown, but it was his antislavery writings that brought him the most notoriety and controversy. Developed throughout his writings, rather than systematically in a major work, his antislavery views were shaped and tested in the political and intellectual climate of the antebellum world in which he lived. First developed in The Elements of Moral Science (1835), he tested the boundaries of activism in The Limitations of Human Responsibility (1838), and publicly debated antislavery in Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution (1845). The political crisis from the Mexican-American War through the Kansas-Nebraska Act heightened Wayland’s activism as delineated in The Duty of Obedience to the Civil Magistrate (1847), his noncompliance with the Fugitive Slave Law, and his public address on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854). In 1861 he became a committed Unionist. I argue that Francis Wayland was a mediating figure in the controversy between abolitionists and proslavery apologists and that his life was a microcosm of the transition that many individuals made from moderate antislavery to abolitionism. Wayland proved unique in that he was heavily coveted by Northern abolitionists who sought his unconditional support and yet he was respected by Southerners who appreciated his uncondemning attitude toward slaveholders even while he opposed slavery. I argue that Wayland’s transition from reluctant critic to public activist was not solely due to the political sweep of events, but that his latter activism was already marked in his earlier work. Most importantly, his life demonstrated both the limits and possibilities in the history of American antislavery.

What is the meaning of the Mexican-American's job displacement and participation in a training program? To answer this question, this study adopted hermeneutic phenomenology as a methodological approach. My intention was to search for deep meaning of job displacement followed by entering an educational program. Ten Mexican-American individuals who had been displaced from their job due to economic and trade reasons, and who later participated in a retraining program, were interviewed. Tentative themes were drawn from the analysis, and 15 thematic categories were confirmed after follow-up interviews. The themes were: Mexican-American Culture, Machismo, Self-determination, Resilience, Union Membership, Job Security, Have Someone Advocate for Their Rights, Job Displacement, Trade-related Closure, Breach of the Psychological Contract, Emotional Distress, Education and Retraining, Entrepreneurship and Problems with Workforce Benefits. The themes were expanded based on participants' words and then discussed through a post-analysis literature review. Recommendations were made to government and non-government organizations advocating for a potential change in policies. Recommendations were also provided to healthcare providers and to U.S. American workers. Finally, recommendations were made for future research.

A survey of four classes of ELD (English language deficient) students of Mexican descent was performed at Rancho Verde High School, Moreno Valley, CA in March, 2001 in an attempt to determine whether adolescents of Mexican descent who develop an identity close to their Mexican roots have higher levels of self-esteem than those who develop an identity close to their American experience.