Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 210-230).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2007. / Adviser: Gregg Lambert. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, May 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 156-169).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 282-292).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002. / Bibliography: leaves 322-336.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 380-400).

Thesis (PhD(Visual Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

M.Tech. / In this research, I examine whether cultural meanings embedded in original sixteenth to eighteenth century Dutch lace and Shweshwe fabric, as examples of colonial forms, are transformed through selected processes. With reference to Dutch lace from Holland, I analyse how the form changes within colonial and post-colonial contexts, but propose that the cultural meanings of the lace remain similar in both contexts. With reference to Shweshwe fabric, I argue that the form stays the same within both colonial and post-colonial contexts, but that its cultural meaning changes as a result of how patterns printed on it are named and identified in a post-colonial context. In this research, I use the term ‘cultural meaning’ to refer to certain signifiers of culture. I propose that factors such as value, class, aspiration, desire and consumption are embedded in or make cultural meaning. My central argument proposes that crocheted doilies, and plastic tablecloths and placemats might be seen as post-colonial versions of Dutch lace. These post-colonial versions of Dutch lace are adopted and adapted by female homemakers in Naledi Ext. 2 to suit certain decorative tastes, values, aspirations and act as markers of class. This adoption and adaptation of the original colonial form, shifts the cultural meanings imbued within it, but not necessarily the associated consumptive meanings. Whilst the primary focus of the theoretical research is Dutch lace and its proposed post-colonial counterparts, I also examine examples of original Shweshwe fabric and how meanings of motifs found on this fabric have been transformed by the modern Mosotho to reflect notions of value and aspiration, whilst the actual motifs appear to be unchanged. In my practical work, I use Dutch lace, crocheted doilies, and plastic tablecloths and placemats, as well as Shweshwe fabric as visual references in the production of large to small scale paintings. In these, I explore how, through painterly alteration and transformation, shifts can occur in the meanings of patterns derived from these culturally-loaded sources.

“Desifying Shakespeare” focuses on the sharp spike in Shakespeare performances in India in the last three decades (1993-2018), a period of time that coincides with the advent of globalization, the liberalization of India’s economy, and the emergence of the field of Global Shakespeare. By mobilizing the bilingual portmanteau desify, a word that simultaneously references the abstract and aspirational nation (des) and the quotidian process of making local or native in popular culture, this project argues that these self-consciously Indian productions or “desified Shakespeare” disclose contemporary Indian ideas and inquiries of the nation. The dissertation thus works to demonstrate the discursive overlaps and tensions between race, caste, religion, gender, language, color, and nationality, categories that are historically contingent, fluid, and performative. Each chapter centers around the affordances and appropriations of a different Shakespeare play and its iterations in contemporary India: Romeo and Juliet and the neighborhood as nation, Othello and the performativity of caste, Hamlet and the borderlands,Twelfth Night and diaspora space. “Desifying Shakespeare” thus marks the overlap and tension between the intensely local, the triumphantly national, and the universally global. Over the past two decades, the rise of the Hindu Right in India has resulted in Indian public discourse marking a return to and renewed investigation of the nation and its paronyms: national and nationalism. While the Hindu Right propounds a triumphalist and homogenous narrative of the nation, “Desifying Shakespeare” troubles this narrative by turning to performance, which I argue negotiates the tension between the des or the nation and desifying or the process of making local, concepts that both overlap and oppose each other. Prior studies on Shakespeare in India have relied heavily on the consequences of Shakespearean adaptations’ colonial origins, often restricted to analyses of single productions. However, “Desifying Shakespeare” shifts, in its methodology, to emphasize a synoptic view of Shakespeare in India, its multiple vectors of influence—colonial, global, postcolonial, and transnational—and its diverse areas of overlap. While the tendency within the field of Global Shakespeare is to dismiss the nation in favor of the local and the transnational, this project argues that the local and the transnational are entwined in the contemporary notions of the nation. “Desifying Shakespeare” works to provide an alternative theorization of adaptation by using the portmanteau desify—a word that performs the very action it describes. A combination of des, the Hindi word for country/nation (implicitly understood to mean Indian), and the English suffix “—fy” denoting the transformation or the process of making into, desify is itself a word that desifies the English for change. An analysis of desification, thus involves a shift from a privileging of the putative original to an approach that considers a wider web of influences spanning different media, genres, languages, and sources. Running through this dissertation is a theorization of language in performance, moving between the concepts of neighboring, regional, vernacular, and dialect. “Desifying Shakespeare” thus shifts away from the dominant postcolonial metaphors of narration and imagination to emphasize the role of embodied performance in determining and upending a national identity. How the des is constructed in these productions provides an alternative to a neat narrative of the nation that moves beyond the Indian context to provide a model for Global Shakespeare criticism more broadly.

Currently, Eurocentric theories and practices of urban teachers and students are often studied under a White gaze of expected deficits. Much of this research is quantitative (e.g., documenting the number of teachers of color); the qualitative research that documents the experiences of people of color usually lacks the personal lived experiences of racial marginalization that only one who has endured them can tell. Addressing this research problem, in this dissertation, I share findings generated from a 9-month autoethnographic study of my experiences in light of the blockade of anti-Black epistemologies and ontologies in (music) teacher education. Framed by Critical Race Theory, Critical Pedagogy, and Postcolonial Theory, the aim of this study is to examine the lived experiences and narratives of a Black-queer doctoral student and teacher educator—in dialogue with majority Black and Latinx preservice early childhood and elementary students in his music teacher education course—considering how Eurocentric frameworks position teachers and students. Inquiries into how curricular stories are constructed as mirrors and windows (Bishop, 1990) are woven to reveal the ways in which dominant theories and ideologies affect the discourses and identities of soon-to-be teachers and point toward the need for students and educators of color to be taught to analyze and name injustices documented within life histories, all the while transforming oppressive encounters to affirm individual and collective humanity. While the focus of this self-study and autoethnography is the researcher, this ethnographic composition of teaching and teacher education is informed by the researcher’s teacher education practices, experiences, and learnings in the context of an early childhood and elementary teacher education course for non-music majors at a primarily-Hispanic serving urban institution of higher education. It examines classroom discursive interactions and archival data (e.g. journal reflections, course assignments) using ethnographic research methods and critical narrative analysis (Souto-Manning, 2014) to make sense of data. In doing so, it co-constructs a polyphonic space for multiple perspectives to stand in counterpoint (conflict), reimagining and reclaiming the discourses that purport to hold knowledge about peoples of color lived experiences. Findings are rendered by engagement with a range of Afrocentric visual and multimodal data.