Sounds that Fall Through the Cracks, and Other Silences and Acts of Love tells the story of a dozen cosmopolitan socially aware singer-songwriters, poets and musicians of different racial, ethnic and national backgrounds who developed their political consciousness by thinking within/through the colonial problematic of Québec or Puerto Rico in the 1960s and 1970s. Five interrelated claims give coherence to this work: a) grasping the decolonial import of socially aware repertoires needs to attend to the meeting point among sound, music, lyrical content, and the interlocutor’s perspective on the musical object; b) understanding the historical contexts which shaped each interlocutor’s life is necessary to fully comprehend her political-aesthetic choices; c) when incorporating the interlocutor’s way of imagining the past one must pay attention to the ways in which that past has been historicized d) reflecting on how the other is inscribed in sound and word needs to account for how that other envisions herself and; e) these critical assessments must be developed “theorizing with your interlocutor” in a relentless back and forth informed by love and friendship that takes seriously the critical import of the interlocutor and considers his needs and desires. Combined, these claims are conducive to a critical analysis that is historically rigorous, ethical and fair to the interlocutor and the other to the extent that the unavoidable limitations of the researcher allows for. By departing from spaces where the eye meets the ear, logos and phono entwine, the historical context shapes the musical object and vice versa, fieldwork and life are fused, and the interlocutor is treated not only as a producer of culture but as a thinker in her own right, I problematize four major categories: Puerto Rican nueva canción (PRNC), chanson québécoise (CQ), the related anticolonial narratives that frame these musics, and the category “the decolonial.” Regarding the latter, I pay careful attention to the relationship between bodies of knowledge around the colonial, such as postcolonial, Latin American decolonial, settler colonial and anticolonial studies. Edouard Glissant has argued that “generalization” is one of the manifestations of a “totalitarian root” because “from the world it chooses one side of the reports, one set of ideas, which it sets apart from others and tries to impose by exporting as a model” (2010 [1990]: 20). Inspired in part by the Martiniquais philosopher and poet, my overall argument is that decolonizing knowledge must involve a collective praxis of “theorizing with your interlocutor” that in addition to assessing how colonial logics are reproduced and proposing ways to contest them, must challenge the “totalitarian” and individualist “root” of academic discourse. In order to develop this collective praxis, I walk hand in hand with my interlocutors/friends Américo Boschetti, Frank Ferrer, Bernardo Palombo, Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, Hilcia Montañez, Oscar Pardo, Sandra María Esteves, Suni Paz, Sylvain Leroux, Marie-Claire Séguin, Rouè Doudou Boicel, Lise Vachon and Georges Rodriguez, and other decolonial and anticolonial thinkers.

Diabetes is a serious health threat that disproportionately affects Hispanics of Puerto Rican heritage. Current evidence supports diabetes prevention programs to change health behaviors in people who are at risk and thus prevent the development of type 2 diabetes. However, few interventions exist for Hispanics, and even fewer have been designed for Puerto Rican adults. A literature review of community-based diabetes prevention programs involving at-risk Hispanics was conducted using a cultural sensitivity framework to determine the state of the science and identify gaps in knowledge regarding diabetes prevention for Puerto Ricans. An integrated theoretical framework was developed using constructs from the extended parallel process model (perceived severity and susceptibility) and social cognitive theory (self-efficacy) to design program components aimed to educate and motivate positive dietary behavior change in Puerto Rican adults. The two key components were a diabetes health threat message and dietary skill building exercises that incorporated spirituality and relevant faith practices, and were culturally-tailored for Puerto Ricans. A pretest-posttest, concurrent mixed methods design was used to test the impact and evaluate feasibility of a diabetes health threat message and skill-building exercises in a sample of Puerto Rican adults. A total of 24 participants enrolled in the study and attended six-weekly meetings that included baseline data collection, a health threat message, dietary skill building exercises, focus group interviews, posttest data collection, and an end-of-study potluck gathering. All of the study participants were Puerto Rican and a majority were female (70.8%), with a mean age of 55.5 years (SD 13.71). Most had a family history of diabetes (n = 21, 87.5%) and believed they were at-risk for the disease (n = 16, 66.7%). Using Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank test, significant increases or improvements were found in perceptions of diabetes severity (p < .01), dietary self-efficacy (p = .002), and dietary patterns (p = .02) at posttest in comparison to baseline. Spearman's rank correlations found moderate to strong relationships between the following variables: perceived severity and weight (rs = -.44, p = .03), dietary self-efficacy and dietary patterns (rs = .43, p = .04), dietary self-efficacy and fasting blood glucose levels (rs = - .45, p = .03), and American acculturation and weight (rs = .51, p = .02). The qualitative themes that emerged contributed to our understanding of participants' perspective relative to the health threat message, dietary skill building exercises, and the importance of cultural relevance and spirituality. The data support feasibility of this faith-based intervention that had an attendance rate of 58% and no loss of sample due to attrition. Diabetes prevention interventions for at-risk Puerto Ricans adults that incorporate a faith-based, culturally-tailored health threat message and dietary skill building exercises may help educate those who are at-risk and motivate lifestyle behavior change to prevent the development of diabetes. Further faith-based, culturally-tailored diabetes prevention research is indicated for Puerto Rican adults.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Riverside, 2009. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references. Issued in print and online. Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations.

Thesis. 1976. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch. / Bibliography: leaves 253-258. / by Tulio Espada. / M.C.P.

This dissertation examines New York Puerto Ricans’ identifications as part of a Hispanic collectivity that saw itself as a permanent and integral sociocultural group of New York City between the years 1931 and 1951. It argues that a New York Latino identity emerged at this time across ethnic, racial and class lines through Spanish-speakers’ strategic appropriations of the era’s transnational frameworks, including proletarian fraternalism (chapter one), Pan-Americanism (chapter two), cosmopolitan aestheticism (chapter three) and anti-colonialism (chapter four). Whereas the coordinates of present-day Latino identities are generally traced back to the ‘invention’ of a Hispanic category in order to create voting or consumer blocs in the late twentieth century or, conversely, to the political and cultural ‘awakening’ of Hispanics during the countercultural decades of the sixties and seventies, this dissertation upsets these timelines by showing how a New York Latino identity materializes earlier than previously thought. Specifically, it explores how the sociopolitical conjuncture of the 1930s and 1940s, with the sweeping reforms of the New Deal, the unprecedented influence of socialist ideas on American culture, the antifascist fight and world war, and the consequent emergence of anti-colonial movements, provided a grammar for New York Puerto Ricans’ self-definitions as part of a pan-ethnic minority that was “here to stay” in New York. In so doing, this dissertation challenges depictions of early New York Puerto Rican communities as isolated or self-contained spaces, and inquires into the ways localized ethnic identities are modulated by national and international events. Reading works by New York Puerto Rican authors like Jesús Colón, Pedro Labarthe, Pedro Caballero, and Guillermo Cotto-Thorner, and drawing from historical documents and New York Spanish-language periodicals such as Artes y Letras, La Voz, Eco Antillano, Pueblos Hispanos and Liberación, this dissertation weaves sociocultural analysis, literary criticism and archival research to begin to redress the relative lack of scholarly attention given to the cultural productions of New York Hispanic communities prior to midcentury and thus provides historical moorings for the cultural expressions of Latino New York.

Thesis (M.P.A.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1992. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2903. Abstract precedes thesis as 5 preliminary leaves. Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 186-192).

Thesis--Michigan State University, 1973. / Bibliography: p. 192-196.

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2010. / Directed by Diane Gill; submitted to the Dept. of Kinesiology. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Jul. 16, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-109).

Negative experiences of stigmatization, discrimination, and rejection are common among people living with HIV in the United States, and particularly when they are also members of a minority group. Some three decades after the first cases of AIDS were identified, people infected with HIV continue to be perceived and characterized negatively. While an HIV/AIDS diagnosis is typically associated with negativity, this study investigates the extent to which collective experiences among HIV-positive people result in healthy responses and positive social adjustment. This study is focused on the ways in which HIV-positive Puerto Rican men in Boston live positive despite being diagnosed with HIV. Rather than wrapping themselves in the social stigma of HIV and the isolation that entails, they participate in processes that affirm themselves and their peers. In so doing, they help generate both healthy and meaningful lives for themselves and others. The study examines the process in which Puerto Rican men living with HIV in Boston participate, promote, and reaffirm an HIV community, la comunidad, as a social entity with a unique culture and identity. This study also investigates how this community influences, supports, and encourages the adoption of positive transformations for living long term with HIV. On the basis of nine months of field research, this qualitative study employed both focus groups and interviews with fifty HIV-positive Puerto Rican men in Boston. These men were recruited, using convenience sampling, from different community-based organizations (CBOs) that provide HIV/AIDS services in Boston. The study finds that HIV-positive Puerto Rican men in Boston build community, not in response to social exclusion, but built on shared positive practices and strategies for living healthy with HIV. These men come together to negotiate and form a unique cultural community expressed in norms, beliefs, and practices that, although centered on HIV, are designed for living healthy. These expressions reaffirm a sense of community in everyday settings and transform the lives of these men with positive behaviors and healthy lifestyles. The findings reveal that this transformation takes place in the context of a community, with the support, encouragement, and at times, policing of others. La comunidad is where the lives of these men are transformed as they learn, adopt, and experience living positive with HIV.