This thesis explores the appeal of Israel and Zionism for Ashkenazi Jews in Canada. The origins of Diaspora Zionism are examined using a genealogical methodology and analyzed through a bricolage of theoretical lenses including post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and critical race theory. The active maintenance of Zionist hegemony in Canada is also explored through a discourse analysis of several Jewish-Zionist educational programs. The discursive practices of the Jewish National Fund and Taglit Birthright Israel are analyzed in light of some of the factors that have historically attracted Jews to Israel and Zionism. The desire to inhabit an alternative Jewish subject position in line with normative European ideals of whiteness is identified as a significant component of this attraction. It is nevertheless suggested that the appeal of Israel and Zionism is by no means immutable and that Jewish opposition to Zionism is likely to only increase in the coming years.

This thesis examines the development of both Italian and Canadian nationhood and its effect on and contribution of racialization in Canada. It analyzes the manner in which scholarship on Whiteness tends to dehistoricize and decontextualize immigration in the creation of White subjects, and how this practice denies the conditions under which most individuals have become immigrants. The study challenged the discursive claims made by Italian-Canadian scholarship by applying a critical race analysis, and highlights how Italian-Canadians achieved Whiteness in Canada and its implications.

The objective of this work was to study the addition of fluorescent whitening agents (FWAs) for efficient use on pigment coating of paper substrates with low grammage and the goal was to achieve high optical response by using low amount of FWAs. A commercial light-weight coated (LWC) paper grade was provided by Stora Enso Corbehem Mill and isotropic laboratory sheets were produced at Stora Enso Research Centre using PFI sheet former. Optical properties such as brightness, whiteness and L, a* and b* colour space values were evaluated using Minolta spectrophotometer with D65 illuminant for both types of substrate using different types and amounts of FWA while the effect of the addition of dye was evaluated in both isotropic sheets and as well as in the coating. The results showed that brightness and whiteness of double-coated paper increased by increasing the amount of fluorescent whitening agent in the coating layer. Also, higher brightness and whiteness was achieved by introducing a higher amount of fluorescent whitening agent in the top coating rather than in a pre-coating. The addition of a shading colorant in the paper substrate had a positive influence not only on the brightness but also on the whiteness of coated paper. / Syftet med denna studie var att studera tillsatsen av fluorescerande vitmedel (FWA) för att effektivisera användningen i pigmentbestrykning av papper med låg ytvikt. Målet var att nå en hög optisk respons men ändå använda en låg mängd FWA. Ett kommersiellt LWC-papper erhölls från Stora Enso, Corbehems pappersbruk, och isotropa laboratorieark tillverkades med PFI-arkformerare på Stora Enso Research Centre. Optiska egenskaper, såsom ljushet, vithet och färgrymd (L, a* och b* värden), hos samtliga prover med varierande mängd och typ av FWA uppmättes med hjälp av en Minolta spektrofotometer med D65 ljuskälla. Effekten av färgnyanstillsats utvärderades både hos handgjorda ark och hos bestrykningslager. Resultaten visade att både ljushet och vithet hos dubbelbestrukna ark ökade med ökad mängd FWA i bestrykningslagren. Högre ljushet och vithet nåddes också när FWA placerades i toppbestrykningen. Tillsats av nyanseringsfärg i papperssubstratet ökade både ljushet och vithet hos de bestrukna arken.

This thesis examines the development of both Italian and Canadian nationhood and its effect on and contribution of racialization in Canada. It analyzes the manner in which scholarship on Whiteness tends to dehistoricize and decontextualize immigration in the creation of White subjects, and how this practice denies the conditions under which most individuals have become immigrants. The study challenged the discursive claims made by Italian-Canadian scholarship by applying a critical race analysis, and highlights how Italian-Canadians achieved Whiteness in Canada and its implications.

This essay examines the uses of the grotesque in Alice Walker’s novel The Third Life of Grange Copeland. Published in 1970 the novel has been subject to various readings by diverse scholars. However, previous research has failed to take into account the displays of the grotesque in the novel. This essay argues that not only does Walker use the grotesque prominently throughout the novel, but also that Walker constructs an intricate critique of U.S. society through her depictions of the grotesque. Resting largely on the theoretical perspective of Mikhail Bakhtin this essay examines the following grotesque images: the female spectacle, the female adolescent, the hysteric, pregnant death, monstrosity, and whiteness. By exposing Walker’s uses of the grotesque, this essay offers an analysis that exposes the relationship between Walker’s grotesque images and her womanist objective. The aim of The Third Life of Grange Copeland is to critique the oppressive regimes of patriarchy and U.S. white supremacist culture and society. It is argued here, then, that the grotesque is strategically used in different manners when addressing womanist and racial issues. Walker uses the grotesque in order to alter confining gender binaries and expose and criticize the destructive aspects of patriarchal and white supremacist ideologies. Through her narrative and the diverse characters of The Third Life, Walker exposes the repercussions of oppressive white supremacist and patriarchal orders.

Moving to Florida to retire has become commonplace among American elders, though we have seldom addressed how lesbians and gay men navigate sexual identity in retirement. I undertake ethnography of three suburban, retirement-aged residential communities in Florida in which lesbians and gay men make community in order to understand how identities are produced by and within communities, the significance of suburban gay communities in the post-gay community era, and how residents from each community engage dominant discourse. Sanctuary Cove 1 is a ―gay and lesbian‖ retirement community; Bayside Park is a ―women‘s-only‖ (lesbian) community; and Heritage Estates is a heteronormative retirement community with a growing lesbian ―network.‖ Drawing from conversations with thirty lesbians and four gay men, I compare community practices to support my argument that these are respective settings for accrediting, contesting, and privileging identities. By exploring how participants collectively construct and present sexual selves in disparate communities, I attempt to uncover the co-constitutive interaction between community and identity; while attention to the ruling relations of sexuality, sex, gender, race, and class engages the politics of privilege and stigma.

This thesis analyzes three current and popular media sites, exploring a term I coin “straight benevolence.” An ostensibly supportive and progressive attitude adopted by heterosexuals and expressed toward gay men in the United States, straight benevolence surreptitiously subordinates gayness and further entrenches white masculine heterosexual privilege. In my examination of hip-hop artist Macklemore’s “Same Love,” seven Major League Baseball “It Gets Better” gay-advocacy videos, and the “Suddenly, Last Summer” episode of ABC’s primetime U.S. television series Modern Family, I take an intersectional approach to address the interanimation of sexuality, gender, and race. I ask: In what ways is gay male sexuality normalized and sanitized, which I argue are requirements for straight benevolence? What attitudes toward gayness surface? How do supposedly enlightened, even charitable, stances on gayness construct representations of ideal—straight, male, white—citizens and therefore privilege particular identities? How, in other words, does straight benevolence preserve heterosexist and racist norms?

This critical case study investigated the experiences of ten White preservice social studies and language arts teachers as they learned about race and racism during the first semester of an urban-focused teacher preparation program. Through observation, interview, and artifact data, this inquiry analyzed how the preservice teachers engaged with the topic of race through the conceptual framework of critical Whiteness studies. This theoretical lens seeks to identify the normalized, oppressive practices of Whiteness with the goal of reorienting those practices in antiracist ways. The author identified two broad themes of transgressive White racial knowledge and conventional White racial knowledge to characterize the progressive and problematic aspects, respectively, of the preservice teachers’ engagement with race. The participants displayed transgressive White racial knowledge through the way they combatted deficit thinking toward urban students and through their knowledge of the mechanics of Whiteness and structural racism. They displayed conventional White racial knowledge through their stories of early experiences with racial difference, their use of subtle resistance discourses during race conversations, and their tendency to misappropriate critical racial discourses. As a whole, the racial knowledge of the ten White preservice teachers points to conflicted, ambivalent feelings at the core of their racial identities. Their desires to talk about race and to develop an antiracist teaching practice were mediated by competing desires to maintain their identities as “good Whites” and to protect their investments in Whiteness. The complex ways that these White preservice teachers engaged with critical racial discourses have significant implications for critical Whiteness studies, teacher education, and social studies education. Their willingness to explore race in a critical fashion should push teacher educators to resist homogenizing, deficit views of the antiracist potential of White teachers. However, their problematic engagement with race points to the importance of viewing White identity as conflicted. If antiracist pedagogies begin with this understanding of White racial identity, they can encourage profound shifts in the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of Whiteness. These shifts can help White teachers to develop racial literacy and to build an antiracist teaching practice. / text

While memoria is the fourth canon of rhetoric, its generative power remains essentially absent from rhetoric and composition studies. In my dissertation I use Mnemosyne's story as a way to reconceptualize memoria beyond the confines of mnemonic techniques and memorization. I provide an overview of memoria using the terministic screens of storehouse, invention, and subjectivity in order to explain its absence and the consequences of this gap. I posit that the generative, critical, and embodied qualities of memory shape our ways of knowing and being and our hermeneutical, inventive, and revisionary practices.I argue that memory is rhetorical: it's not just what is remembered/forgotten that matters, but how it is remembered, by whom, for what purpose, and with what effect. Rhetorical memory is a process and product(s) of remembering. Rather than remaining fixed, rhetorical memory is dynamic, relational, infused with emotion, steeped in imagination, and context dependent. It is also relational, not autonomous and continuous. When memory is written, it expresses, analyzes, connects, rebuilds, and transforms the links between private and public, past and present, self and other, reason and emotions, fact and fiction, and mind and body. Rhetorical memory is (re)visionary. In chapter two, I explicate the constructed/reconstructed nature of rhetorical memory as demonstrated by Maxine Hong Kingston in No Name Woman. I also examine how rhetorical memory enriches feminist pedagogy(s), especially how agency might emerge and be sustained. In chapter three, I focus on the critical aspects of rhetorical memory by investigating how the memory of Mary Magdalene was constructed to maintain cultural hegemony. I argue that rhetorical memory provides a critical tool for underrepresented groups to critique, disrupt, and revise truth claims often represented in traditional bodies of knowledge. In chapter four, I assert that rhetorical memory empowers writers to uncover white privilege and take action against such injustices. I also include a section on how I incorporate rhetorical memory into my pedagogical practices. I call on scholar teachers to address how our professional discourses and scholarly conventions impede how we communicate about the kinds of insights we gain from rhetorical memory.

Local and federal governments, public school boards, and higher education institutions have been promoting online courses in their commitment to accommodating public needs, widening access to materials, sharing intellectual resources, and reducing costs. However, researchers of education needs to consider the often ignored yet important issue of equity since disregarding the issue of inequity in online education may create suboptimal consequences for students. This dissertation work, therefore, investigates the issues of social justice and equity in online education. I argue that equity is situated between the tensions of various social structures in a broader cultural context and can be thought of as a fair distribution of opportunities to participate. This understanding is built upon the idea that individuals have different values, goals, and interests; nevertheless, the online learning context may not provide fair opportunities for individuals to follow their own learning trajectories. Particularly, online learning environments can reproduce inequitable learning conditions when the context requires certain individuals to assimilate mainstream beliefs and values at the expense of their own identities. Since identifications have certain social and political consequences by enabling or constraining individuals’ access to educational resources, individuals may try to be identified in line with culturally-hegemonic perspectives in order to gain or secure their access to educational resources or to legitimize their learning experiences. In this interview study, I conceptualize online courses within their broader socio-historical context and analyze how macro-level social structures, namely the concept of whiteness, can reproduce inequity in micro-level online learning practices. By questioning who has control over the conditions for the production of knowledge, values, and identification, I investigate how socially accepted bodies of thoughts, beliefs, values, and feelings that give meaning to individuals’ daily-practices may create inequitable learning conditions in day-to-day online learning practices. In specific, I analyze how those who are identified as non-White experience “double-bind” with respect to stereotypification on one hand, anonymity on the other. Building on this analysis, I illustrate how those who are identified as non-White have to constantly negotiate their legitimacy and right to be in the online environment.