This thesis looks at how the rule of law fails to achieve justice for Indian-American survivors of domestic violence in a multitude of ways, corresponding to class and religious positionality, as well as documentation status, and how the Indian community mobilizes in response to these failures by creating alternative modes of justice for survivors. Historically, these alternatives have taken form as direct service organizations, providing culturally and linguistically accessible services to survivors. I contend that these are helpful on an individual level, working to interrupt cycles of violence, but not at the collective level – stopping these cycles altogether. Given the systemic nature of sexual violence, working from transformative justice principles is an ideal modality of organizing, but not feasible given the structure of Indian-American communities today. In the interim between present post-violence work and future integration of transformative justice, I argue that pre-violence educational models are the most effective way to see tangible, generational, systemic change. Modes of resistance through educational initiatives aimed towards Indian youth ages ten to eighteen against rape culture will more effectively deter the cycles of intra-community violence from occurring, specifically when oriented from sites of religious worship and/or cultural centers – spaces that create a sense of Indian identity. These educational spaces currently do not exist as an intra-community effort, so I analyze various feminist pedagogies as well as an example of this work being done within other communities to extend these praxes back to the Indian community.

This research explores the lived experiences of South Asians college students. This research, through a qualitative study that is rooted in the philosophy of phenomenology, explores the essence South Asians’ identity formation. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews with South Asian college students. The data analysis was under a phenomenological lens that centered the lived experiences and the essence of these experiences in the results. Seven themes emerged from this phenomenological study: negotiating bicultural identity, model minority expectations, meaningful impact of religious spaces, understandings of intra-community tensions, racialization of Islamophobia, understandings of South Asian identity and efficacy of Asian American identity. This study’s findings provide a foundation to build a more expansive framework for understanding the identity formation of South Asians.

My study aims to reveal how ideologies, the way we perceive our world, what we believe, and our value judgments inextricably linked to a dominant discourse, have real and material consequences. In addition to explicating how these ideologies stem from a Western philosophical tradition, this thesis examines this thought-system alongside selections from Sandra Cisneros’ Woman Hollering Creek and Caramelo or Puro Cuento. My project reveals how Cisneros’ spatial narratives challenge ideologies concerning the border separating the United States and Mexico, which proves significant as the project of decolonization and understanding of identity formation is fundamentally tied to these geographical spaces. Through the main chapters in this thesis, it is proposed that Cisneros’ storytelling does not attempt to counter fixed ideas of spaces and identity or an alleged objective Truth and single History by presenting a true or better version, but offers alternative narratives as a form of resistance to dominant discourse.

This thesis examines the connection between Dominican history, the influence of American material culture, and the mythic American Dream as catalysts for migration. The two U.S. occupations and American propaganda through media had a great effect on the deceptive perception of an American life as an effortless method for attaining wealth. Let it Rain Coffee by Angie Cruz, will focus on the character, Esperanza Colon, and her obsession with the lavish lifestyle she views on the television show, Dallas. Material objects, as argued by Daniel Miller in his book, Stuff, work in subtle yet significant ways and determine our function, identification, and experience in society. If the ideal purpose of material culture is to presuppose our roles as individuals, one can conclude that the novel showcases the issues of a subordinate class struggling to attain the material goods that represent economic wealth while maintaining a sense of self-identification and self-agency.

In 1920s-30s São Paulo, Brazil, leaders of the vanguard artistic movement known as “modernism” began to argue that national identity came not from shared values or even cultural practices but rather by a shared way of thinking, which they variously designated as Brazil’s “racial psychology,” “folkloric unconscious,” and “national psychology.” Building on turn-of-the-century psychological and anthropological theories, the group diagnosed Brazil’s national mind as characterized by “primitivity” and in need of a program of psychological development. The group rose to political power in the 1930s, placing the artists in a position to undertake such a project. The Symphony of State charts this previously unexamined intellectual project and explains why elite leaders believed music to be the most-promising strategy for developing the national mind beyond primitivity. In 1935, they founded the São Paulo Department of Culture and Recreation in order to fund music education, train ethnomusicologists, commission symphonies, and host performances across the city. Until now, historians of twentieth-century Brazil have praised music as a critical site for marginalized groups to sound out political protest. But The Symphony of State shows the reverse has also been true: elite groups used music as a top-down civilizing project designed to naturalize racial hierarchies and justify class difference. The intellectual history portion of the dissertation turns on archival sources, newspaper accounts, personal correspondence, modernist literature, and the period’s scholarly journals. The examination of literary form, discourse analysis, and marginalia lends depth to a carefully-documented study of ideas. Then, The Symphony of State brings to bear an innovative reading of ethnographic field books, vinyl records, and music scores to show that the department’s scholarship and symphonic compositions alike furthered the narrative of a nation jeopardized by primitivity. What is more, the department’s composers employed musical properties such as harmony and dissonance as metaphors to convince listeners that a harmonious society required the maintenance of racial and class hierarchies. In bringing further clarity to the department’s intellectual project, the sections featuring music analysis speak to the value of reading music as an historical text. The dissertation accomplishes multiple goals. It uncovers the theory of national psychology driving the musical institution; examines ethnographic material to further understand racial and regional prejudice in the period; and analyzes concert music commissioned and performed by the municipal department. The examination of the musical institution reveals a moment in Brazilian history in which national identity was constructed atop the notion of a shared psychology and in which modernity was believed to come with the musical tuning of the body politic and the training of its mind.

The purpose of this thesis was to explore how Christian networks enable strategies of transnational alliance, whereby groups in different nations strive to strengthen one another’s leverage and credibility in order to resolve conflicts and elaborate new possibilities. This research does so by analyzing the case of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia (IPC). The project examines the historical development of the IPC from the initial missionary period of the 1850s until the present. Specifically, the purpose of the study was to consider how the historical struggle to articulate autonomy and equality vis-à-vis the U.S. Presbyterians (PCUSA) and paternalist models of ecclesial relations has affected recent political strategies pursued by the IPC. Despite the paternalism of the early missionary model, changing conceptions of social transformation during the 60s contributed to a shift in relations. Over time the IPC and PCUSA negotiated relationships in which groups both acknowledge a problematic history and insist upon an ethnic of partnership and respect. Today, PCUSA groups, in concert with the IPC, collaborate on a range of transnational political strategies aimed at strengthening the IPC’s leverage in local struggles for justice and peace. A review of this case suggests that long-established Christian networks may have an advantage over other civil society groups such as NGOs in facilitating strategies of transnational alliance. Although civil society organizations often have better access to important resources needed for international advocacy initiatives, Christian networks, such as the one established between the IPC and U.S. Presbyterian communities, rely on a history of negotiating power-disparity in order to elaborate relationships based on listening and partnership. Such findings prove important not only to how we conceptualize transnational alliance but also to the ways that we think about the history and future of Christian networks.

French Canadian playwright Joseph Armand Leclaire (1888-1931) was very well known and respected in his time. Although he wrote over thirty plays, lyrics to several songs and an abundance of political poems, most of his work has been lost and Leclaire himself seems to have been forgotten. Several of his plays were produced at the time they were written, including his 1916 play La petite maîtresse de l'école (later published in 1929 as Le petit maître d'école), but none have been presented postumously nor have any been translated. This M. F. A. thesis presents the first ever translation and adpatation of Leclaire's play, titled in English as The Little Schoolmaster. The first half of the thesis provide historical context for the play's significance, as well as information about Armand Leclaire and the changes he made to his own work between the original 1916 version and the 1929 published version. The thesis then analyses the creative acts of translation and adaptation, proposing a new model of translation for a linguistically rich audience. Through this new model of translation-adaptation for a bilingual spectrum, the thesis concludes by demonstrating that dramaturgy can serve as a dynamic instrument for communities to engage in the exploration of bilingual and bicultural identity.

In recent years Sweden has witnessed an increasing number of newcomers into its schools from an array of sociocultural and ethnic backgrounds. Rather than see this as a ‘burden’, this case study looks at ways teachers can embrace diversity, build upon students' prior knowledge and experiences and challenge traditional notions of how knowledge is produced in the classroom. Drawing on multicultural and critical pedagogies, 11 class teachers across four subject disciplines and working at 2 different schools, in a provincial town in the south of Sweden, were asked about their pedagogical practices teaching in mainstream classrooms with students of different ethnic backgrounds. The analysis focuses on whether the teachers are able to create spaces for inclusive learning. Findings suggest that while aspiring to a participatory model of teaching which welcomes students’ views and experiences newcomers are largely excluded from such practice further cementing their marginalised status. Furthermore, in navigating dominant discourse around race, ethnicity and cultural diversity teachers, for the most part, end up reproducing stereotypes or rely on common sense understandings of otherness which do not change the status quo. However, some of the teachers’ pedagogical practices demonstrate ways of moving beyond normative practice towards a more critical approach by providing students with alternative ways of knowing that aim to challenge stereotypes, avoid generalisations and disrupt the Western/Eurocentric ideal of the universality of truth.

Since 2001, the San Colombano Project has provided the College-Bound Tutoring program for disenfranchised prospective first-generation college students in a southwestern community of the United States. However, an evaluation of the program had never been conducted. The purpose of the study was to conduct a qualitative, responsive program evaluation in a naturalistic setting using a case-study approach with a constructivist lens to create a narrative portrait of the program. Guided by critical race theory, Vygotsky's zone of proximal development, and Wlodkowski's motivational theory, the study explored the effectiveness of the program. Interviews were conducted and archival data were examined to understand the effectiveness of the program. Interview participants included 5 leaders, 4 alumni/staff members, and 2 adult volunteer tutors. Typological, inductive, and content analyses were applied to the contextualized data. The findings arising from data analyses were based on these themes: (a) authentic hope, (b) social and emotional learning, (c) organizational leadership, and (d) creation of a college completion culture. To promote social change, a program evaluation was provided to San Colombano Project based on these findings. Social change may be achieved through implementation of the program evaluation on behalf of these disenfranchised students by (a) embedding promising practices; (b) extending learning and growth opportunities; (c) leveraging data to improve, sustain, and embed processes; and (d) applying recommendations for enhancing an organizational learning culture.

The problem is that little is known about the life experiences and womanist characteristics of African-American female school leaders and how these experiences and characteristics have collectively influenced their leadership skills and practices within American schools. The phenomenological study sought to understand and describe the lived experiences of African-American female educational leaders who embody womanist characteristics and to identify how the following five factors have influenced their practices in educational leadership: (a) activism, (b) the knowledge and acceptance of multiple identities, (c) the usage of motherwit and othermothering (d) the care-ethic, and (e) the breaking of barriers. A purposive sample of African-American women who are educational leaders in urban school districts with predominately racial and ethnic minority student populations in the southwestern and southern parts of the country were used in this study. Data was analyzed to answer the following three research questions: (a) What do the characteristics of womanism mean to African-American female educational leaders?, (b) What perceived role do womanist characteristics have in the professional practices and leadership-styles of African-American female educational leaders?, and (c) What elements of womanism influence the African-American female educational leader’s efforts in helping to close the achievement gap experienced by many students of color? The study was conducted using an explanatory, qualitative style based on a phenomenological methodology. Participants completed telephone and face-to-face interviews. The four female participants (a) have held educational leadership positions, (b) are between the ages of 30 and 80, and (c) are African-American. This research can be a source of information and motivation to all women who aspire to become educational leaders, specifically African-American women who serve or desire to serve minority students in urban schools. The analysis revealed the nine themes: A mentor is a must, teacher leadership, activism, overcoming stereotypes, a strong sense of self, a vocation, breaking barriers, care, and high expectations.