Hindu Indian Bengalis as an ethno-linguistic and transnational group have negotiated their social locations historically, contemporaneously, and transnationally. In this dissertation, I examine and argue how transnational migration is the most recent in a long line of Bengali strategies to negotiate their social location vis-à-vis other populations in India. Since the early years of the nineteenth century, in Bengal specifically, a series of socio-political dynamics have reshaped and reconstituted Bengali social status. These dynamics can be observed across various geographic scales - national, regional, and local -- and have continued to inform their contemporary gender relations. En route to this examination, the dissertation exposes assumptions about who constitutes families, problematizes "family" centrally en route to examining spousal relations among Indian-Bengalis. I have examined the lived realities and experiences of migrant spouses in the U.S. and their family living in India amidst differing—and often conflicting-- imaginaries and practices of families. Through my work, I thus illustrate that family and marriage relations can be, and often are, strategic and fluid even as many people view them as structural and enduring. Over time, representations of the idealized Bengali family, of manhood and of womanhood have all shifted, reflecting sociopolitical and economic changes. A constant, however, has been the central role of gender in all these imaginaries and realized configurations. In this dissertation, I employ a "gendered optic," a heightened sensibility to what they communicate about gender. As I examine in my work, gendered boundaries amid the Bengali population can be found in a deeply rooted history, a colonial legacy, and one, although repackaged, that continues to be seen contemporaneously. Bengalis' transnational negotiations in family and marriage expand our understanding of transnational gender relations across broad social and historical scales, particularly the transnational. In this vein, the dissertation contributes significantly to the field of gender studies, specifically the field of feminist theorizing and intersectionality studies, postcolonial and South Asian studies, and to the scholarship on migration and transnational migration studies.

Over the past century, the Japanese community in Peru has grown to be the second largest in South America. Their arrival and subsequent success in small businesses posed a threat to the Peruvian attempt to “whiten” their population. Because of this, racial conflicts arose between the Japanese and Peruvians, leading to the widespread “Yellow Peril” epidemic. Anti-Japanese sentiments caused immigration reduction laws and in the years leading up to WWII, tensions grew. During this time, the Japanese community remained ethnically close, maintaining transnational ties with Japan. This changed after the war, when their sojourner mentality changed to the permanence of Peru as a home. The community slowly built up to where they are today as a respected ethnic minority. They were able to do so because of the creation of a new pan-ethnic identity, Nikkei. This new identity allowed the Japanese population to adopt certain aspects of both their Japanese and Peruvian identities, both which at this point were becoming problematic to represent who they were. Identity formation of immigrants is a complicated process in which identities of the new country clash with lasting identities from their home country. The Nikkei identity allows for the Japanese to still maintain certain ties with Japan, yet not be constrained to being totally Japanese. During the process of assimilation into Peruvian society, the Japanese have come to rely on their new Nikkei identity as a way to distinguish themselves within Peruvian society, while at the same time resisting exclusion and marginalization.

This thesis focuses on the development of the first project for FIU’s ICAVE, The Globe Experience, presented as part of the “First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare” exhibit during February, 2016. The thesis is divided into two parts. The first part is the project itself: a virtual reality recreation of going to The Globe Theater to see a play by William Shakespeare. The second part examines the digital project and outlines how Walter Benjamin and postcolonial theorists influenced the design of The Globe Experience, resulting in, what I call, a “temporally and spatially disjointed London.” From this examination, the thesis goes on to question the role of canonical literature in the humanities. I go on to make the argument that the design decisions made in recreating The Globe reveals the ways in which canonical literature can reinforce and support hierarchical ideologies which can impede student learning.

This study examines the cultural production and political history of Nicaragua from the 1960s to the early 1990s and interprets Francisco Goldman’s The Ordinary Seaman alongside Central America’s literary boom period, the nation-building project of the revolutionary letrados, and race relations between Nicaragua’s Pacific region and its two autonomous sectors of the Atlantic coast. It is argued that Central American ways of seeing are colored by the interplay between a revolutionary past, the myth of the pure Indio or mestizo, and the erasure of national identity in the US contact zone. Rather than recuperating a Central American identity, it is maintained that exposing the construction of said identity uncovers the hidden blackness and the heterogeneity of the Central American isthmus. Ultimately, the thesis aims at giving visibility to forgotten and ignored Central American narratives, histories, and people, and stresses the significance of studying the region within a literary and black Atlantic perspective.

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This written portion of my thesis will document and codify how I as dramaturg, writer and director adapted and staged the classic Harlem Renaissance novel Infants of the Spring by Wallace Thurman. I walk the reader through how seeing as a director influenced my creative choices through key aspects of production: script development, design, and building the ensemble. The thesis will conclude with a post-production reflection and summary.

Traditional policies dictate that Black-White multiracial people conform to monoracial minority status arising from Hypodescent (the “One-Drop Rule”) and White privilege. Despite some social recognition of Black-White persons as multiracial, racial microaggressions persist in daily life. Subtle racist acts (Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, & Esquilin, 2007b) negatively impact multiracial identity development. Since 2007, studies have increasingly focused on the impact of racial microaggressions on particular monoracial ethnic groups. Johnston and Nadal (2010) delineated general racial microaggressions for multiracial people. This project examines the effects of racial microaggressions on the multiracial identity development of 11 part-Black multiracial university students, including the concerns and challenges they face in familial, academic, and social racial identity formation. Data were analyzed through a typological analysis and Racial and Multiracial Microaggressions typologies (Johnston & Nadal, 2010; Sue et al., 2007b). Three themes arose: (a) the external societal pressure for the multiracial person to identify monoracially; (b) the internalized struggle within the mixed-race person to create a cohesive self-identity; and (c) the assertion of a multiracial identity. Participants experienced Racial Microaggressions (Sue, 2010a; Sue et al., 2007b), Multiracial Microaggressions (Johnston & Nadal, 2010), and Monoracial Stereotypes (Nadal, Wong, Griffin, Sriken, Vargas, Wideman, & Kolawole, 2011). Implications included encouraging a multiracial identity, educating the school community, and eliminating racial microaggressions and stereotypes.

In this re-evaluation of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, I identify the original causes that made the Study emerge, examine why the intent of this research shifted over time, reveal the manner in which the Study was conducted, expose the role the government played in the manipulation of the Experiment, and, finally, investigate the ways, as well as the reasons, for the selection of the participants involved in the Study. After exploring the Experiment itself, I investigate the lasting effects of it on the community in which it occurred and the ways in which it further affected the relationship between African Americans and the United States Government. I explore the reasons for the involvement of Tuskegee Institute. Also, the philosophies of its founder, Booker T. Washington, are examined to discover the rationale behind the Institution's participation in an Experiment, which eventually became harmful. Finally, I hope to reveal why Tuskegee has been historically omitted from any blame in the Study.

American schooling and Indigenous peoples share a coarse relationship mired by devastating periods of forced removal, indoctrination, and brutal assimilation methods. Over the course of more than a century of failed education policy—though often veiled in good intentions—Indigenous peoples have yet to witness a comprehensive Indigenous education program that fundamentally honors the federal trust responsibility of the United States government. On the contrary, with a contemporary approach of apathy, invisibility, and institutionalization, it is not difficult to see the legacy of settler colonialism continuing to wield its oppressive influence on Indigenous communities. Wolfe’s (2006) claim that “invasion is a structure, not an event” (p. 388), prompts the recognition of the coloniality of power—referring to the interpellation of modern forms of exploitation and domination, long after the termination of formal colonial operations. This decolonizing interpretive approach of this dissertation served to: a) examine the historical and philosophical foundations of colonizing epistemicides and their impact on contemporary Indigenous education; and b) move toward the formulation of a decolonizing Indigenous curricular framework for contemporary Indigenous education. Grounded in Antonia Darder’s (2012, 2019) critical bicultural theory and a decolonizing interpretive methodology, this qualitative study examined the complex factors facing the indigenization of education, while implicating the pernicious impact of epistemicides and a culture of forgetting. The study provided a robust framework by which to situate a particular curricular approach through a set of five decolonizing principles that aim to shape a meaningful reflection of Indigenous consciousness. A commitment to these decolonizing principles necessarily means an emancipatory re-reading of Indigenous relations within the scope of contemporary education. It calls on educational leaders to paradoxically ground their decision-making in the ancestral teachings of Indigenous communities, for a genuine reimagination of self-determination and sovereignty in the contemporary moment.

This study examines how Swedish newspapers frame the Sámi people in their articles. Previous research suggests that the Sámi people, and other minorities, often are portrayed in a one sided and stereotypical way in the news discourse. This paper studies to what extent the Sámi people are represented in four Swedish newspapers during 2023 and in which types of articles they are mentioned. Further, the study also examines how many of the articles in the empirical material have a primary Sámi theme. To answer the thesis questions the method used is a content analysis with quantitative elements. The results indicate that when the Sámi, or issues regarding this minority, are mentioned in news articles in 2023, the coverage tends to focus on culture and entertainment and is frequently published on the culture pages of newspapers. It is also evident that the Sámi are scarcely mentioned in relation to sports, science and socioeconomics. A third important finding is that the articles with a primary Sámi theme were more conflict-oriented compared to articles without such a theme. The result is analyzed on the basis of post colonial theory and framing theory.