ABSTRACT Casa Samba is a cultural organization and samba school that has been operating in New Orleans’ performance scene since 1986. The group has been run by an American couple, Curtis and Carol Pierre, since its inception. Their son, Bomani Pierre, has been raised in the Afro-Brazilian drumming and dance practices that Casa Samba teaches and performs. Life histories of the group’s founding family are the basis of this qualitative case study. Using the details of individual lives and the context that these details provide, this dissertation seeks answers to two key questions: How and why does an American couple run a samba school? How does Casa Samba’s presence in New Orleans shape its practices? As Carol and Curtis described their early lives and young adulthoods, it became apparent that each of them was seeking a way to remake their identities. The terrain for analyzing this search became personal authenticity, and I examine how each of the adult Pierres is on a quest for personal authenticity that begins early in their lives and continues through their creation and maintenance of Casa Samba. But the sense of personal authenticity that underwrites the Pierres’ construction of Casa Samba comes into contact with another form of authenticity, one that is external, evaluative, and also the root of New Orleans’ tourism economy. Thus, further questions arose regarding Casa Samba’s location in New Orleans and its cultural landscape. How does the tourist industry shape what is “authentic”? How is Casa Samba an “authentic” New Orleans cultural organization? In what ways is it an “authentic” representative of Brazilian carnival? In the end, authenticity may be too narrow a concept from which to understand the totality of who the Pierre family is and what Casa Samba is. For this reason, this research examines Casa Samba as a utopian project, a site of cultural belonging, and an Afrocentric venture. I propose that Curtis and Carol Pierre have drawn on their knowledge of what is valuable, meaningful, and important—that is, authentic—to produce a cultural organization that reflects their sensibilities to the fullest extent possible.

Although historians have done in-­‐depth researched on Black police in the South, before the Civil War and during Reconstruction, they seldom assess black policemen’s role in New Orleans between the Battle of Liberty Place and 1913. The men discussed here argue that despite the hardening racial attitudes in Post-­‐ Reconstruction South, in New Orleans opportunity still existed for Blacks to serve in positions of authority, perhaps a heritage of the city’s earlier tri-­‐partite racial order. The information obtained from primary sources such as police manuals, beat books, and newspapers, counters the widely held belief that African American presence in the police during this period was completely defined by Jim Crow. This work presents updated and corrected evidence that Blacks were enrolled in the New Orleans Police Department during the time of Jim Crow, challenging the notion that after 1909 Blacks in New Orleans were not part of the police department.

Like elsewhere in Europe, the tides of nationalist right-wing rhetoric in Sweden have become instrumental in generating a wave of anti-liberal and anti-immigration sentiments in politics and media. In particular, one branch of right-wing alternative media has become a breeding ground for normalizing such rhetoric. Does the anti-immigration stance in such media disguise racist inclinations? In this thesis we examine the discourse of three right-wing alternative media sites in Sweden to explore the possible employment of different types of racism in their articles. By taking the constructivist viewpoint and adopting the post-colonial conceptions of the 'Self' and the 'Other', racist discourse was analyzed and characterized as either biological or cultural. From these two theories, we derived concepts concerning descriptions of contemporary and ideal Swedish society that will be used as further indicators of racist discourses. In this single case study, 94 articles from Fria Tider, Nya Tider, and Samhällsnytt were analyzed on the topics of immigration, integration and crime through a qualitative content analysis. The results show that most of the articles contain cultural racist discourse.

Esta dissertação apresenta como a criação de personagens realizada pelo escritor guianense Wilson Harris em The Sleepers of Roraima (1970) ressoa com premissas da ideia de diferença existente em cosmologias ameríndias. Para traçar uma relação entre esses planos, o trabalho foca na corporalidade e na perspectiva, tópicos fundamentais do americanismo tropical, articulando-os aos processos de singularização de personagens narrados na trilogia de novelas de Harris. Destaca-se como modos de individuação de povos nativos da região repercutem com as dinâmicas que compõem os seres ficcionais da obra. Essas dinâmicas, mediadas por aspectos pré-individuais irredutíveis a uma morfologia de personificações fisiologicamente discreta, participam da focalização das novelas, de modo que esta funciona como eixo de proliferação de perspectivas. Assim, o narrador se afasta do princípio de identidade como medida régia da personificação, convergindo com a replicação diferenciante própria de práticas de muitas ontologias ameríndias. O estudo mostra que as personagens analisadas também não são finalizadas por contornos intelectuais ou psicológicos, mas variam relacionalmente à medida que atualizam pontos de vista desdobrados por recursos narrativos como oxímoros e paralelismos. Tais procedimentos textuais dirigem provocações de Harris contra o determinismo mimético do realismo, por meio de linhas de encontro entre dilemáticas barrocas, bricolagens surrealistas e a noção ameríndia de diferença. A partir desta análise literária, a dissertação esboça contribuições para o aprofundamento de uma reciprocidade de perspectivas entre a etnologia americanista, a filosofia da diferença e os estudos literários, considerando possíveis rendimentos dessa simetrização para o questionamento de antípodas modernos tais como natureza/cultura, indivíduo/sociedade e nós/outros. / This dissertation presents how the way the Guyanese writer Wilson Harris creates characters in The Sleepers of Roraima (1970) resonates with premises of the idea of difference existing in indigenous cosmologies of lowland South America. In order to outline a relation between these planes, the work focuses on corporeality and perspective, two themes that are key to americanist ethnology, linking them to the processes of singularization of characters narrated in Harriss trilogy of novellas. More precisely, this research highlights how modes of individuation of the native peoples of the region reverberate in the dynamics that make up the fictional beings in his work. These dynamics, mediated by pre-individual aspects which are irreducible to a morphology of physiologically distinct embodiments, take part in the focalization of the novellas, producing an axis of proliferation of perspectives. Thus, the narrator turns away from the principle of identity as the common denominator of personification, converging with the differentiating replication that characterizes practices within many Amerindian ontologies. This study shows that the analyzed characters are not defined by intellectual or psychological boundaries, but vary relationally as they actualize points of views unfolded by narrative features such as oxymorons and parallelisms. Such textual procedures are directed against the determinism of mimetic realism, through lines of imbrication between baroque dilemmas, surrealist bricolages and the Amerindian notion of difference. As from this literary analysis, this dissertation outlines contributions to deepening a reciprocity of perspectives between Americanist ethnology, the philosophy of difference and literary studies, benefiting from this symmetrization as a point of entry for interrogating modern antipodes such as nature/culture, individual/society and we/others.

This submission for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy focuses on works for large instrumental ensemble in conjunction with the voice. Instrumental ensemble and vocal mediums such as the orchestral art song, the song cycle and the opera in one act, provide platforms to explore the expressiveness of the lyrical dramatic voice and the dialectic tension between composing for the solo voice with a range of instrumental ensemble forces. The portfolio of compositions includes the orchestral song, The Woman Who Refused to Dance; the orchestral song trilogy, Spirit Songs; and the opera in one act, Queen Nanny of the Maroons. Issues of composition technique, vocal expression and operatic narrative are examined and in addition the three named works explore notions of post-colonial heroic representation of subjects that might not usually attract ideological recognition in Western European art music contexts. Methods for developing inclusive, post-modern musical language for the mixed instrumental and vocal ensemble are explored; including the employment of spoken word expression and the integration of popular music idioms within contemporary Western European art music contexts. In the writing of lyrics for the songs and libretto for the opera, increased responsibility is assumed in the completion of vocal works in addition to musical consideration to find the effects on the works when the roles of composer and writer are combined. With the opera in one act for solo voice, forming the major contribution to the portfolio, critical components that lead to effective music drama are assessed.

Esta dissertação apresenta como a criação de personagens realizada pelo escritor guianense Wilson Harris em The Sleepers of Roraima (1970) ressoa com premissas da ideia de diferença existente em cosmologias ameríndias. Para traçar uma relação entre esses planos, o trabalho foca na corporalidade e na perspectiva, tópicos fundamentais do americanismo tropical, articulando-os aos processos de singularização de personagens narrados na trilogia de novelas de Harris. Destaca-se como modos de individuação de povos nativos da região repercutem com as dinâmicas que compõem os seres ficcionais da obra. Essas dinâmicas, mediadas por aspectos pré-individuais irredutíveis a uma morfologia de personificações fisiologicamente discreta, participam da focalização das novelas, de modo que esta funciona como eixo de proliferação de perspectivas. Assim, o narrador se afasta do princípio de identidade como medida régia da personificação, convergindo com a replicação diferenciante própria de práticas de muitas ontologias ameríndias. O estudo mostra que as personagens analisadas também não são finalizadas por contornos intelectuais ou psicológicos, mas variam relacionalmente à medida que atualizam pontos de vista desdobrados por recursos narrativos como oxímoros e paralelismos. Tais procedimentos textuais dirigem provocações de Harris contra o determinismo mimético do realismo, por meio de linhas de encontro entre dilemáticas barrocas, bricolagens surrealistas e a noção ameríndia de diferença. A partir desta análise literária, a dissertação esboça contribuições para o aprofundamento de uma reciprocidade de perspectivas entre a etnologia americanista, a filosofia da diferença e os estudos literários, considerando possíveis rendimentos dessa simetrização para o questionamento de antípodas modernos tais como natureza/cultura, indivíduo/sociedade e nós/outros. / This dissertation presents how the way the Guyanese writer Wilson Harris creates characters in The Sleepers of Roraima (1970) resonates with premises of the idea of difference existing in indigenous cosmologies of lowland South America. In order to outline a relation between these planes, the work focuses on corporeality and perspective, two themes that are key to americanist ethnology, linking them to the processes of singularization of characters narrated in Harriss trilogy of novellas. More precisely, this research highlights how modes of individuation of the native peoples of the region reverberate in the dynamics that make up the fictional beings in his work. These dynamics, mediated by pre-individual aspects which are irreducible to a morphology of physiologically distinct embodiments, take part in the focalization of the novellas, producing an axis of proliferation of perspectives. Thus, the narrator turns away from the principle of identity as the common denominator of personification, converging with the differentiating replication that characterizes practices within many Amerindian ontologies. This study shows that the analyzed characters are not defined by intellectual or psychological boundaries, but vary relationally as they actualize points of views unfolded by narrative features such as oxymorons and parallelisms. Such textual procedures are directed against the determinism of mimetic realism, through lines of imbrication between baroque dilemmas, surrealist bricolages and the Amerindian notion of difference. As from this literary analysis, this dissertation outlines contributions to deepening a reciprocity of perspectives between Americanist ethnology, the philosophy of difference and literary studies, benefiting from this symmetrization as a point of entry for interrogating modern antipodes such as nature/culture, individual/society and we/others.

The use of myth in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God has been touched on by a few critics, but the wealth of Hurston's knowledge of different cultures offers readers a number of stories and tales from which to draw possible analogues to her characters. In fact, readers can trace Greek, Roman, Norse, Babylonian, Egyptian, African and African-American mythic elements in her character Tea Cake Woods. Hurston uses these analogues to enrich the characterization and to posit her theories of love and happiness in the modern age.

This thesis explores the relationship between colonialism and the environment through a study of hurricanes in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Because hurricanes do not discriminate between international borders, they reveal much about the influences of political, economic, and social structures on vulnerability to hurricanes, hurricane preparation, and hurricane relief efforts. The Caribbean is a region that has been disproportionately impacted by hurricanes. It is also a region that has been wholly shaped by colonization. Prior to Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Caribbean, natives on islands like Puerto Rico and Cuba built and structured their societies around hurricanes and other catastrophes. Different aspects of colonialism altered the relationship between Puerto Ricans and Cubans and their respective environments. Though Puerto Rico and Cuba share incredibly similar histories, competing trajectories have emerged on both islands as they have undergone processes of decolonization and independence. An examination of Cuban and Puerto Rican history prior to Hurricane Irma and Hurricane María in 2017 provides a deeper understanding of the divergent histories of both islands. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that the legacy of colonialism continues to impact the identities and security of Cuba and Puerto Rico today.

The Hispanic population in central Texas tends to have low levels of civic engagement as compared to other groups in the same area, which leads to disproportionate political marginalization. Prior research has focused on characteristics of voters and nonvoters, but has failed to explore the lack of political mobilization among Hispanic voters. The purpose of this study was twofold; first to better understand the nature of Hispanic voters' political marginalization, and second, explore why participation levels are so low among this group. This general qualitative study applied critical race theory to explore the barriers perceived by Hispanic voters related to political marginalization that may contribute to low voter participation. Data were collected through interviews with 20 randomly selected Hispanic people residing in central Texas. Interview data were transcribed, inductively coded, and then organized into themes. The key research findings identified 3 themes that potentially explain low civic engagement; a general distrust in government, a deficiency of civics education in the public school system, and specific cultural preferences that may contribute to low levels of participation in voting and politics. Findings also revealed that there is little understanding of the voting process, and few public initiatives to encourage the Hispanic voter community to vote or otherwise engage in participatory democracy. Recommendations to policy makers to promote positive social change include increasing funding for civic education, and creating voter outreach programs. Policy makers and politicians should also seek out ways to build trust in the political process throughout the Hispanic community.

Twenty percent of Hispanic nursing students at a west coast university are being dismissed from the nursing program due to repeated failures in nursing courses. The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of Hispanic nursing students' experiences of successfully completing a nursing program, earning a baccalaureate of science degree, and passing the state licensing examination for registered nurses despite having failed a nursing course and having been placed on academic probation. Guided by Tinto's theory of academic integration, a descriptive phenomenological design was used to explore Hispanic nursing graduates' success experiences. Purposive sampling was used to select a representative sample of 6 Hispanic registered nurses who achieved success after academic failure in the nursing program. Data were collected through 5 face-to-face interviews and 1 telephone interview. Giorgi's steps for data analysis were used to create a meaning structure of the success experience. Findings from analysis of the data revealed that the general structure of the phenomenon of achieving academic success is a process that occurs in 3 distinct successive stages: despair, self-reflection, and change. During the self-reflection stage, a pivotal turning point was the recapture of the dream to become a nurse. These findings lead to the preparation of a professional development workshop that may acquaint educators with the stages of the success journey for students such as these, and may equip educators with knowledge and skills to intervene to support students through the stages of the success journey. Positive social change may result from educators effectively guiding nursing students to achieve their academic goals and successfully graduate from a nursing program.