In this thesis, I trace my personal journey and the precursors of unlearning and conversation necessary to start to move towards anti-racism. With a focused look on specific aspects of feminist history, Scripps College as a place was historically contextualized. This allowed for an exploration of its student body, a look at the ways in which traditional gender meanings and expectations necessarily operate within that space. White students who claim the label feminist add complexity to that space, though their reactions to conversations of race can be traced back to the historic and gender over-determined systems of domination and victimhood that produce caustic white feminist tears. Finally, different ways of having difficult conversations are discussed, along with detailed understandings of why those conversations are necessary. In conclusion, I try to envision a kind of feminism that I would like myself and my peers to continue to work for, and emphasize again the sort of education that one must undergo in order to continue their awareness and work.

Blacks who have descended from the nineteenth century Atlantic slave trade have historically debated and worked to claim a sense of cultural identity that reflects their African heritage and their identity as diasporic. I am particularly interested in how people of the black Atlantic claim their multiple identities since, for people of a diaspora, one main factor is the fact that they inhabit multiple spaces but cannot call any home. How does transnationalism become a better way to describe the cultural identity of those in the "black Atlantic" since these people have to create new or adapted identities as they move from place to place? For Paul Gilroy, the "black Atlantic" applies to people who descended from slaves forced to come to New World (19). In a sense, slavery is a major part of African diasporic history, but I would claim that as time has progressed and people of this lineage came to find homes in the Caribbean, America, and Europe and they have not lost their heritage. Instead, they have retained these identities in a transnational sense. Multiple cultural identities become integrated into each transnational individual, making each person unique to his or her culture without losing sight of his or her common heritage. I explore these identity formations through a close reading of The Butterfly's Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora (sic) in the United States (2001), a collection of short stories, poetry, and personal accounts from Haitian diaspora in the United States, whose stories delve into the issue of transnational identity. The idea of diaspora as read in the text of The Butterfly's Way emphasizes that the more fluid and encompassing terms of hybridity and transnationalism more accurately describe the geographical movements and consequential amassing of black identification within Paul Gilroy's concept of the "black Atlantic." My analysis is supported by a survey of theoretical discourses, particularly those related to black identity. I utilize post-colonial theory while focusing particularly on transnationalism and diasporic studies through Stuart Hall, as well as W.E.B. Du Bois's conception of "double consciousness" to support and develop my argument on how blacks negotiate multiple identities (11). To discuss the formation of a people, I use the work of political theorist Ernesto Laclau, in particular, his arguments in On Populist Reason (2007) on group identity and demand. Gilroy's concept of the "black Atlantic" has many similarities to Laclau’s notion of the "empty signifier" as a way for people to form groups for collective action. I conclude that transnationalism works as better way to describe the black diaspora since black descendants of slaves have retained multiple identities as Africans as well as citizens of their current nations. My paper argues that transnationalism and hybridity function as better terms to describe people who have the Atlantic slave trade in their history.

This thesis addresses how Japanese and Japanese Americans may have lived and been perceived in Virginia from 1900s through the 1950s. This work focuses on their positions in society with comparisons to the nation, particularly during the “Jim Crow” era of “colored” and “white,” and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. It highlights various means of understanding their positions in Virginia society, with emphasis on Japanese visitors, marriages of Japanese in Virginia, and the inclusion of Japanese in higher education at Roanoke College, Randolph-Macon College, William and Mary, University of Virginia, University of Richmond, Hampden-Sydney College, and Union Theological Seminary. It also takes into account the Japanese experience in Virginia during Japanese internment, while focusing on the Homestead, Virginia, as well as the experiences of Japanese students and soldiers, which ultimately showed Virginia was distinct in its mild treatment towards the Japanese as compared to the West Coast.

Using the film La Haine (1995), directed by Mathieu Kassovitz, as an object of analysis, this paper explores culture as a tool of exclusion in France through sociological, architectural, and political contexts. It investigates La Haine as one of the first representations of the banlieue to mainstream French audiences, as well as the ways in which the film reveals how immigrants and children of immigrants struggle to find personal, cultural, and national identity in France.

The problems focused on in this study are to determine (1) if racial differences exist when American College Testing Program (ACT) scores are used to predict Grade Point Average (GPA); (2) how placement decisions may be affected if differences do exist; (3) and what guidelines or recommendations can be formulated to avoid possible test bias and discrimination in placement procedures. Subjects consisted of the total population of 139 Black freshman students and a sample of 139 White freshman students entering a Southeastern regional university in the fall of 1970. Separate regression analyses were performed for Black, White and combined (total) groups on several sets of data. Regression analyses consisted of English GPA on English ACT scores, Math GPA on Math ACT scores, Psychology GPA on Social Studies ACT scores. Analyses were also performed for first semester GPA on Composite ACT scores, and second and fourth year GPA on Composite ACT scores. Based on Cleary’s (1968) definition of test bias, the results indicate that a single regression plane cannot be used to predict grades for Blacks and Whites, Current University placement guidelines were found to place Blacks in courses where their probabilities of success are lower than that of their White counterparts. It is recommended that a more flexible placement policy be instituted in order to avoid challenges of bias and/or discriminatory placement practices. It is recommended that individual students decide whether or not to enroll in a particular course. This decision is to be aided by updated University placement guidelines (based on regression equations) issued to faculty advisors, along with reference to updated expectancy tables.

In modern historiography, Henri Christophe, king of northern Haiti from 1816-1820, is generally given a negative persona due to his controlling nature and his absolutist regime, but in his correspondence, he engages in diplomatic collaborations with two British abolitionists, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, in order to improve his new policies and obtain international recognition. This paper argues that the Haitian king and the abolitionists engaged in a mutual collaboration in which each party benefitted from the correspondence. Christophe used the advice of the British abolitionists in order to increase the power of Haiti into a powerful black state, and Wilberforce and Clarkson helped the king position Haiti as a self-sufficient nation to fuel their abolitionist argument of the potential of post-emancipation societies.

A formação deste trabalho tem como horizonte a comparação entre as obras Mayombe e Predadores do autor angolano Pepetela, principalmente no tocante a perspectiva nacional que está impressa em cada texto, todavia de maneiras diversas. A possibilidade de ler as obras de maneira muito próxima aos fenômenos históricos angolanos é aquilo que faz com que se projete sob os olhos a questão nacional que é tão cara à série literária angolana, principalmente caso se tenha em mente a formação do jovem país e a necessidade de construir a identidade. As obras em questão registram, em momentos diversos, esta construção e as nuances ideológicas no processo nacional, cada qual em uma época e quando olhadas uma em relação a outra, consegue-se depreender mais, primordialmente aquilo que está no âmbito ideológico da desconstrução e da perda de paradigmas, sejam eles políticos ou culturais. É o efeito da pós-modernidade que obriga a sociedade em questão a descobrir-se sem chão e sem certeza de nada, uma vez que não mais se pode falar de estado colonial, mas sim pós-colonial e, como tal, terra aberta a possibilidades, sejam elas propositivas ou niilistas com relação à formação nacional. Dessa maneira, para depreender mais que obviedades da relação dessas obras, deve-se ter em mente que as formações híbridas desse espaço obrigam o desapego teórico, caminhando na direção da colaboração entre as disciplinas de modo a captar significativamente algo deste contato. Assim, interrogar-se sobre as obras Mayombe e Predadores tanto no que toca nos pontos de contato quanto nos de repulsão é mais que exercício teórico, é questionar-se quanto à legitimidade do processo nacional que está subentendido nas duas obras. Pepetela, como uma espécie de demiurgo, registra aquilo que está fora do lugar, destoando a análise, e que aos poucos, apresenta como um acre sabor na boca de quem lê, aquilo em que se transformou o sonho de libertação angolana, justamente o antípoda do processo que se apossa e faz com que o capitalismo mais selvagem possível arrebate o sonho comunista de princípio, e que não mais é possível crer num Estado aos moldes do Ocidente do século XIX, mas simplesmente os frangalhos do mesmo. Entretanto, não se pode ler o contexto acima verificado de modo apenas negativo, uma vez que dele pode se verificar obras literárias complexas que não só dão conta da fotografia histórica, mas também de todo um trabalho de linguagem e de sentido que, para ser de fato apreciado, demanda o trabalho técnico hermenêutico de avanço e retrocesso, do micro ao macro, para que se produza algum conhecimento satisfatório a respeito das obras. / The formation of the horizon of this work is the comparison between the literary works of the author of Predadores and Mayombe, the Angolan writer Pepetela, specially at the perspective of Nation that is founded on each text, but in differently ways. The ability to read the works in very closely way to the Angolan historical phenomena is what makes this project closed to the national question, which is so relevant to the Angolan literary series, especially if you have in mind the formation of this young country and the need to build its own identity. The narratives in question express in different times this ideological construction and the variations in the national process, each one at the time, and when they are viewed one relation to another, it can be inferred more, primarily in what this ideological deconstruction and loss of paradigms whether political or cultural. It is the effect of post-modernity which requires the concerned company to find themselves without the ground and not sure of anything, since one can no longer speak of the colonial state, but post-colonial land and as such are open to possibilities they purposeful or nihilistic related to the nationally formation. Therefore, to remove more than superficialities of the relationship of these narratives we should keep in mind that the hybrid formations of this area require the detachment theory, moving toward the collaboration between disciplines in order to capture something significantly of the Contact. So ask yourself about the books Mayombe and Predators both in terms as the contact points as the points of repulsion is more than a theoretical exercise, question itself about the legitimacy of the national process that implied in the two works, makes Pepetela a kind of demiurge, whose records what is out of right place, diverging the analysis, and gradually presents as an acrid taste in the mouth of the reader, what it became the dream of Angola freedom, in the antithesis of the process which takes places and makes the most savage capitalism that destroyed the communist dream of beginning, and that is no longer possible to believe in a state along the lines of the West of the nineteenth century, but simply whats left of it. However, you cannot read the background above only for the negative way, because it can verify the complex literary works that not only realize in the historic photograph but also the work of language and meaning that to be truly appreciated by the reader it demands technical and hermeneutical work, from microspical to the macroscopical, to its bring a satisfactory knowledge about the works.

Colonization adversely impacts the psychological health of the colonized. To heal psychologically, economically, and culturally and break chains of colonization in a post-colonial society, the colonized must be grounded in understanding and embrace of their cultural and historical heritage. This embrace and remembrance of the ancestors will inspire and create a spiritual and mental revolution. Prominent literary works from 16th to 20th century, such as Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition and "Dave’s Neckliss", William Shakespeare’s "The Tempest" and Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, explore the psychological and cultural demise of people of African descent due to colonization and racial oppression. While these works give voice to spiritual leaders, ancestors, and bondaged individuals who strive to overcome and survive adverse circumstances Eurocentric society has imposed upon them, these texts also explore characters who kneel at the altar of White hegemony and embrace Whiteness as the Ark of God, even to the characters’ and their community’s safety and well-being. These I term Black Eurocentric Saviors, characters who sacrifice themselves and their community for safety and saving of Whites. Through application of French West Indian psychiatrist Frantz Fanon's theories of colonization which posits that imposed psychological domination of the colonized by Europeans cultivated the belief in White superiority and the subsequent desire for White approval and blessings by any means necessary, including worshipping Whiteness, betraying other persons of African descent, and/or willing to kill self or other Blacks for both the continued prosperity of White societies and gained prosperity for self. Chesnutt, Shakespeare, and Behn depict oppressed people who (un)consciously appear to embrace with open arms historical narratives and cultural traditions that relegate them to second-class citizens and are thus unable to nurture mythical origins and pride in their ancestral history and legacy. When they seek to conjure their African ancestors, they do so, not for their freedom or elevation, but for betterment of White society. Through the application of Fanon's theories on colonization to select literary works of Chesnutt, Shakespeare, and Behn's, this dissertation asserts that the diasporic African’s embrace of White superiority resulted and continues today in both real life and literature.

O presente trabalho analisa o romance do escritor goês Francisco João da Costa (1859-1900), Jacob e Dulce scenas da vida indiana (1896), publicado em Goa, antiga colônia portuguesa na Índia. O principal foco da obra é criticar o comportamento colonial da elite goesa cristã, isto é, retratar de forma bastante ácida seus hábitos e costumes, denunciando sua imitação servil aos modelos europeus. O presente trabalho procura analisar a crítica ali presente, assim como situar o texto em meio a outras obras coloniais de referência para outras tradições literárias, nomeadamente a moçambicana e a marfinense. Finalmente, revela como a crítica produzida na altura do surgimento do livro acaba por colocar em diálogo o escritor goês com um escritor brasileiro, Visconde de Taunay, em cujo debate podemos constatar a densidade intelectual de Francisco João da Costa, assim como alinhá-lo a críticos do colonialismo como Frantz Fanon. / This works analyzes the novel Jacob e Dulce scenas da vida indiana (1896), written by the Goan author Francisco João da Costa (1859 1900) and published in Goa, a former Portuguese colony in India. Its main focus is to criticize the colonial behavior adopted by the Goan Christian elite, in other words, to render an acid portrayal of their habits and traditions exposing their servile imitation of European models. Therefore, our main focus is to study such views on Goan society and to place the novel among other colonial works that are representative to other literary traditions, namely the ones belonging to Mozambican and Ivorian literature. Finally, this investigation reveals how the criticism produced at the time the book was published generated a dialogue between the Goan writer with Visconde de Taunay. Due to this connection, we can determine João Francisco da Costas intellectual density and put him in a group that comprises Frantz Fanon as a critic of colonialism.

This thesis examines the first Citizenship School, its location, participants, and success. Johns Islanders, Esau Jenkins, Septima Clark, Myles Horton, Bernice Robinson, and the Highlander Folk School all collaborated to create this school. Why and how this success was reached is the main scope of this manuscript. Emphasis is also placed on the school's impact upon the modern Civil Rights Movement. Primary sources such as personal accounts, manuscripts, and archive collections were examined. Secondary sources were also researched for this manuscript. The conclusion reached from these sources is that faith was the driving force behind the success of the Citizenship School. The schools unlocked the chains of political, social, and economic disenfranchisement for Gullah Islanders and African Americans all over the South, greatly affecting the outcome of the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans, who had once been forced into second-class citizenship, now through faith and the vote, obtained first-class citizenship.