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La thèse de ce travail de recherche est de démontrer la transformation vers une militarisation inévitable de la politique étrangère des États-Unis en Afrique subsaharienne, depuis la fin de la guerre froide, au début des années 1990, afin de protéger et d’étendre les intérêts capitalistes des États-Unis dans cette région. Une transformation qui va de pair avec l’évolution de l’importance géopolitique de l’Afrique subsaharienne pour les États-Unis, économiquement, politiquement et militairement. Nous étudions les périodes de guerre froide et d’après-guerre froide, deux contextes différents qui présentent des enjeux distincts pour la mise en œuvre de la politique étrangère américaine en Afrique subsaharienne, une région traditionnellement sous influence européenne. La première période étant largement caractérisée par un enjeu idéologique entre les États-Unis et le bloc Soviétique ; tandis que la période d’après-guerre froide reflète de nouveaux intérêts politiques, économiques et militaires pour les États-Unis, plus spécifiquement l’émergence de nouveaux partenaires économiques de l’Afrique subsaharienne, une nouvelle compétition pour l’accès aux ressources naturelles, ainsi que la menace terroriste. Ces développements ont forcé une réévaluation des intérêts géopolitiques des États-Unis en Afrique subsaharienne. Notre travail de recherche examinera donc comment ces dynamiques évolutives influent sur les tactiques, les stratégies et les logistiques de politique étrangère des États-Unis dans cette région. Les objectifs de la politique étrangère étatsunienne sont-ils les mêmes pendant les deux périodes? Quelles sont les constances et les mutations des stratégies américaines en Afrique subsaharienne? Quelles nouvelles tactiques ont été développées et avec quels résultats ont-elles été appliquées ? Quelles leçons peut-on tirer de l’histoire récente de la politique étrangère des États-Unis en Afrique subsaharienne ? / The thesis of this work is to demonstrate the unavoidable shift towards a militarization of U.S. foreign policy toward Sub-Saharan Africa following the end of the Cold War beginning in the 1990’s, in order to protect and expand the capitalist interests of the United States in that region. A shift that evolves in parallel with the growing geopolitical importance of Sub-Saharan Africa to the United States (U.S.) --economically, politically and militarily. We study the cold-war and post-cold-war periods of US foreign policy, as two distinctly different contexts presenting unique challenges to the implementation of U.S. foreign policy in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region traditionally under European influence. The first period is characterized largely by ideological warfare between the United States and the Socialist Bloc; while the post-cold-war period, reflects new political, economic and military interests for the U.S., more specifically the emergence of new economic partners in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a new competition for access to natural resources, as well as a new need for security form the terrorist threat. These developments required a re-assessment of America’s geopolitical interests in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this thesis, we will then analyze the impact of these evolving dynamics on the tactics, strategies and logistics of the US foreign policy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Are the objectives of US policy the same during the two periods? What constant aspects can be found and what mutations of the U.S. strategy in Sub-Saharan Africa? What new tactics have been developed and with what results have they been applied? What lessons can be learned from the recent history of U.S. foreign policy in Sub-Saharan Africa?

The author joins the Peace Corps in the hopes that he will discover who he really is yet he only finds frustration. Upon returning to the States he has a daughter and finds peace. Within this peace, as he types up the life history of a friend, he finally makes a breakthrough, yet the answer he finds is not to his liking.

Thesis advisor: James M. O'Toole / This dissertation examines the development of youth volunteer service in the United States through a constellation of religious, private, and government programs. It explores how this larger impulse, which includes “service trips,” service–learning courses, and postgraduate programs like the Peace Corps, became a normative and ubiquitous opportunity for middle class, and consequently largely white, Americans. This study weaves together multiple programs, and a rich array of ideas and events such as social gospel concerns, pacifism, William James’ arguments for a “moral alternative to war,” gender and class anxieties, Great Depression and Cold War–specific exigencies, the Catholic Lay Apostolate, 1960s student activism, and the War on Poverty. The dissertation further demonstrates the religious roots of this phenomenon, as seen through Protestant and Catholic programs in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Further, it shows that this paradigm of volunteer has always been twofold in its aim; it has focused both on the growth and education of the volunteer as they served others. It also shows that impulse has always been a limited agent for large–scale social change. Service programs were by their nature short–term projects meant to expose and educate volunteers to more entrenched social problems. Finally, while adult organizers often made service opportunities a possibility, it was the desire of many young women and men to “do more” with their time and abilities outside of traditional educational or professional options was the engine that truly drove and grew this movement. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Teachers are being asked to implement cultural awareness into their instruction in the 21st century classroom, yet many lack the requisite knowledge and skills to accomplish this. The purpose of this inquiry was to explore the perceptions of teachers who are returned Peace Corps volunteers (RPCV) regarding what in their long-term international experience influenced them to include cultural awareness in their instruction. Bennett's developmental model of intercultural sensitivity and Mezirow's transformative learning theory were the conceptual frameworks. The research questions for this qualitative study asked how a long-term international volunteering experience impacts teachers' pedagogy and what instructional practices RPCV teachers consider to be influenced by their Peace Corps experience. From 11 interviews, codes were identified and categorized into patterns and themes. There were three key findings. The first was that teachers who are RPCVs recognized their Peace Corps experience provided them with a deep cultural experience that brought about the realization of their own culture. The second was their recognition of their ability to adapt to cultural differences more easily than before they had their Peace Corps experience. The final finding was that RPCV teachers choose to use deep and engaging teaching practices with varied approaches, forms, styles, and subject matter in their classrooms upon their return to the United States. Given the current problem of preservice teachers entering teaching jobs with a lack of cultural understanding, these findings could contribute to positive social change by providing a practical approach for policy makers and universities to increase attention to promoting international volunteering and implementing cultural awareness in their curriculum.

TWO WAYS OF BURNING A COTTON FIELD is an ethnographic memoir concerning the narrator’s experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay, South America. The plot is structured around a moral crisis in his rural Paraguayan village. The narrator’s neighbor, a man in his late twenties, threatened to kill his partner and her two children. The Paraguayan police were made aware of the situation but did nothing. Peace Corps management also instructed the narrator to do nothing. In TWO WAYS OF BURNING A COTTON FIELD, this moral crisis is explored within the contexts of post-colonial power structures, including economic and ecologic geographies, intersections of community and government, and the colonial-indigenous language continuum of Paraguay (Spanish-Guaraní). Further, these neighbors’ localized trauma is located within historical, colonial trauma. Of particular concern is the role that languages – English, Spanish, and Guaraní – play in constructing power, worldview, and relationships within the village.

Self supply is an emerging approach to water supply which focuses on fostering household investment in incremental improvements to their water sources. When successful, it can lower costs and increase sustainability by offering users a larger share of ownership in their own supply, and harnessing the already existing strengths of a community rather than trying to impose an external perspective. In addition to well upgrading and source protection, one of the key self supply areas is rainwater harvesting. Uganda has a diverse selection of rainwater storage options, but many of them are scattered and disparate. The objective of this study was to create a comprehensive collection of well-established Ugandan rainwater storage options, and to demonstrate the geographical disparities in availability, particularly for Rakai District, where the author lived and worked as a Water and Sanitation Engineer for two years. Data was gathered by interviewing key stakeholders in rainwater harvesting at the national, regional, and district level in order to gather their collective knowledge in rainwater harvesting storage techniques. In order to understand the availability and pricing of manufactured products, a survey of Rakai District hardware stores determined the prices and range of volumes at which different manufactured products were available. The study found 11 distinct technologies widely used for rainwater storage: three informal or traditional, three manufactured, and five built-in-place by skilled artisans. The traditional/informal technologies consisted of clay pots, pots and basins, and brick mortar tanks. The manufactured products were plastic tanks ranging from 60 to 24,000 liters, corrugated iron tanks, and 55-gallon metal drums. The built-in-place tank technologies were mortar jars, tarpaulin tanks, ferrocement tanks, partially below ground ferrocement tanks, and interlocking stabilized soil brick tanks. The study also found that while the manufactured products are well distributed, built-in-place options have not spread beyond where they were originally introduced by NGO's trying to promote certain technologies. With regard to costs, tanks with storage volume less than 1,000 liters had costs that ranged from 182 to 724 UGX/liter, with small plastic tanks being least expensive. For volumes between 1,000 and 10,000 liters, costs ranged between 42 and 350 UGX/liter, with tarpaulin tanks providing the largest storage per unit cost. Above 10,000 liters of storage, tanks ranged from 35 to 341 UGX/liter, with tarpaulin tanks again ranking first by cost per unit volume. In order for self supply to flourish, these technologies need to be implemented in such a way that fosters a thriving private sector and independent uptake of rainwater harvesting. This research provides a starting point by laying out the technologies, costs, and volumes available.

This study examines how experiences with art promote healthy cultural identities of self and others, and focuses on the potentially mutual benefits to Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) and youth living in developing countries. As a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) and current elementary art teacher, I combine personal insight with multicultural art education discourse to create a curriculum intended for PCVs to implement during their service. In order to gain relevant feedback on the curriculum's theoretical basis and potential usefulness, I conduct a focus group composed of six RPCVs whose primary or secondary Peace Corps project involved art education or youth development. While examining the critical relationship between the curriculum's meta-narrative, frame narrative, and task narrative, in addition to the unpredictable circumstances Peace Corps service inevitably entails, research findings expose the complex nature of cross-cultural pedagogy. In order to achieve the curriculum's intended goals, implications include emphasizing the PCV's dual role as the facilitator and participant.

Thesis (M.S.)--School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, 2008. / "June 2008." Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-98). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wyoming, 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on June 22, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 98-103).