The Northwest Rebellion, in comparison to other North American civil wars, was short-lived and geographically contained, but for the people who lived through it, the residents of the Saskatchewan district, 1885 was a real and a frightening ordeal. By exploring micro-relations at the individual, family and community levels, and focusing on the connections between residents and ways that they related to each other, a portrait of the region emerges that reveals that Euro-Canadians and Aboriginals were linked to each other in many, and often subtle ways before the uprising. Drawing on personal papers, government and Hudson's Bay Company records, and oral histories, this study shows that race and gender were determining factors in how white, First Nations, Metis and mixed-blood men and women experienced both the conflict itself and its aftennath. Furthermore, its impact on residents' lives and society in the Saskatchewan territory was considerable and the effects long-lasting. Barriers, both physical and social, were created and solidified, and, although groups were still linked by the same family ties that bound them before the spring of 1885, the ways that they viewed each other changed after the rebellion. Mistrust and hostility that had not existed before, or that had been repressed, broke the bonds that connected racial groups, and sometimes families. The new order in Saskatchewan was one in which Euro-Canadians held power, and Aboriginals were second-class citizens barred from mainstream society. The rebellion accelerated white domination of the region, and acted as a catalyst for the racial divisions evident in Saskatchewan in the twentieth century.

The Northwest Rebellion, in comparison to other North American civil wars, was short-lived and geographically contained, but for the people who lived through it, the residents of the Saskatchewan district, 1885 was a real and a frightening ordeal. By exploring micro-relations at the individual, family and community levels, and focusing on the connections between residents and ways that they related to each other, a portrait of the region emerges that reveals that Euro-Canadians and Aboriginals were linked to each other in many, and often subtle ways before the uprising. Drawing on personal papers, government and Hudson's Bay Company records, and oral histories, this study shows that race and gender were determining factors in how white, First Nations, Metis and mixed-blood men and women experienced both the conflict itself and its aftennath. Furthermore, its impact on residents' lives and society in the Saskatchewan territory was considerable and the effects long-lasting. Barriers, both physical and social, were created and solidified, and, although groups were still linked by the same family ties that bound them before the spring of 1885, the ways that they viewed each other changed after the rebellion. Mistrust and hostility that had not existed before, or that had been repressed, broke the bonds that connected racial groups, and sometimes families. The new order in Saskatchewan was one in which Euro-Canadians held power, and Aboriginals were second-class citizens barred from mainstream society. The rebellion accelerated white domination of the region, and acted as a catalyst for the racial divisions evident in Saskatchewan in the twentieth century.

While American Girl markets itself as a brand that teaches girls about our nation’s history and empowers girls to "stand tall, reach high, and dream big," this dissertation, "Mis(s) Education: Narrative Construction and Closure in American Girl" challenges this widely held belief. The American Girl Historical Character Series (hereafter AGHC series) is a textual site that writes a history that relies more on national myths of freedom, independence, and the pursuit of the American Dream through struggle. To dig deeper into this book series, I analyze how intersections of power in particular, nation, gender, race, and consumerism are constructed within the pages of the AGHC series. I assert that these books create a narrative construction and closure within the series. In place of a dialogic history that allows the reader to question historical and/or contemporary issues of power, a dominant narrative of history-one that relies on national myths prevails. While AG prides itself as a brand that first and foremost celebrates and empowers girls to become their very best, the historical series also imposes traditional gender roles for girls. It is this "rhetoric of empowerment" that this dissertation uncovers. Such an imagined empowerment is infused with ambivalence. AGHC series readers are also constructed as consumers who are being taught to celebrate consumerism and the Almighty Dollar.

The wide and enduring educational disparities between European and Asian heritage New Zealanders on the one hand, and indigenous Māori and Pacific Islanders on the other, have been a national education policy priority for some time. Such is the degree of focus on ethnic inequalities that very little attention is devoted to sources of privilege and disadvantage related to socio-economic status (SES) and gender, despite international scholarship showing that both of these profoundly influence experiences of schooling. The current study explores the ways in which SES, ethnicity, and gender influence students’ experiences of learning mathematics in New Zealand schools. Mathematics is a ‘gatekeeper’ subject for a range of highly lucrative career pathways dominated by European and Asian heritage men, making access to mathematical success a social justice issue with powerful material consequences. This thesis describes a mixed methods study of 425 Year Nine (age 13-14) students in three New Zealand state secondary schools, which investigated • the relationships between SES, ethnicity, gender, and success in mathematics, • cultural ideas about what types of people have mathematical ability, and • the effect of ability grouping on attainment disparities. European and Asian students had higher mathematics attainment than Māori and Pacific students. Pacific students reported enjoying mathematics despite their low attainment, whereas Māori students had very negative attitudes towards mathematics. Consistent with international studies, girls had lower confidence than boys in their mathematical abilities, despite having equal attainment. Interview data suggested that these differences in perceptions of mathematics were related to cultural ideas of mathematics as a ‘brain’ activity and therefore a natural fit for socially privileged men. Such ideas were further reinforced by ability grouping, which provided successful students with additional enrichment and withheld from low-attaining students the intellectual challenges that could have facilitated a shift to more successful learning trajectories.

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Contemporary research into the values, bias, and prejudices within "Artificial Intelligence" tends to operate in a crux of scholarship in computer science and engineering, sociology, philosophy, and science and technology studies (STS). Even so, getting the STEM fields to recognize and accept the importance of certain kinds of knowledge— the social, experiential kinds of knowledge— remains an ongoing struggle. Similarly, religious scholarship is still very often missing from these conversations because many in the STEM fields and the general public feel that religion and technoscientific investigations are and should be separate fields of inquiry. Here I demonstrate that experiential knowledge and religious, even occult beliefs are always already embedded within and crucial to understanding the sociotechnical imaginaries animating many technologies, particularly in the areas of "AI." In fact, it is precisely the unwillingness of many to confront these facts which allow for both the problems of prejudice embedded in algorithmic systems, and for the hype-laden marketing of the corporations and agencies developing them. This same hype then intentionally obfuscates the actions of both the systems and the people who create them, while confounding and oppressing those most often made subject to them. Further, I highlight a crucial continuity between bigotry and systemic social projects (eugenics, transhumanism, and "supercrip" narratives), revealing their foundation in white supremacist colonialist myths of whose and which kinds of lives count as "truly human." We will examine how these myths become embedded into the religious practices, technologies, and social frameworks in and out of which "AI" and algorithms are developed, employing a composite theoretical lens made from tools such as intersectionality, ritual theory, intersubjectivity, daemonology, postphenomenology, standpoint epistemology, and more. This theoretical apparatus recontextualizes our understanding of how mythologies and rituals of professionalization, disciplinarity, and dominant epistemological hierarchies animate concepts such as knowledge formation, expertise, and even what counts as knowledge. This recontextualization is then deployed to suggest remedies for research, public policy, and general paths forward in "AI." By engaging in both the magico-religious valences and the lived experiential expertise of marginalized people, these systems can be better understood, and their harms anticipated and curtailed. / Doctor of Philosophy / The twenty-first century has been increasingly full of conversations about how human values, biases, and prejudices make their way into what is usually referred to as "Artificial Intelligence." These conversations have increasingly involved experts from not just science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), but also sociology, philosophy, and science and technology studies (STS). Even so, it's still often difficult to get the STEM fields to accept the importance of certain kinds experience and knowledge— especially that of marginalized people. Additionally, religious scholarship is often excluded from these conversations because many in the STEM fields (and the general public) feel that religion and science and technology should be separate fields of study. Here, I demonstrate that knowledge developed from lived experience and religious, even occult beliefs have always already been part of how we think about and understand many technologies, especially "AI." In addition, I show how people's unwillingness to accept the importance of our experience and beliefs is what leads to the prejudice embedded in algorithmic systems, and the hype-laden marketing of the people developing them. This same hype obscures the mechanisms of actions of both the systems themselves and the people who create them, and that obscurity makes it harder for the people most often oppressed by the systems to do anything about it. I highlight a line of connection between bigotry and large-scale social programs like eugenics, transhumanism, and the idea of the "supercrip," to reveal how they all stem from white supremacist colonialist myths about which kinds of lives count as "really human." These myths became part of the religious practice, scientific education, and social fabric from which "AI" and algorithms are developed. I combine tools from multiple fields to help show how mythologies and rituals of education, notions of what it means to "be a professional," and dominant cultural beliefs about knowledge all animate concepts such as learning, expertise, and even what counts as knowledge. By considering both the magical/religious elements and the lived experiences of marginalized people, we can chart new paths for research and public policy, toward making more ethical and just "AI."

Racism, as a covert but pervasive presence in teacher training in England, remains a major structural issue and its effects on student teachers, from Black and Minority Ethnic groups, are real and troubling. This Study asserts that they face multiple challenges in the Initial Teacher Education process which has implications for the teaching workforce and for pupils in schools. While national statistics for recruitment of BME applicants onto Initial Teacher Education courses are at good levels, in proportion to the BME population in general, their numbers are not viable because the drop-out rate between starting and completing courses, and becoming employed as classroom teachers, is significant. Furthermore the numbers of BME qualified teachers are small in relation to both the BME and white populations in England. This Study, which focuses on 32 BME student teachers at four universities across England, looks at how they journey through and negotiate obstacles and microagressions on their ITE courses. It shows that for those who choose to continue on their teaching course, their responses and modes of coping are complex and varied. Using Critical Race Theory to analyse their stories and make visible the way that hidden racisms within ITE can silence and disempower BME student teachers, the key findings reveal that they may adopt four 'cultural positions': Manoeuvred Cultural Position, Vibrant Cultural Position, Discerning Cultural Position, Stagnated Cultural Position. These demonstrate whether they are managing, struggling, culturally visible or culturally invisible. This study has implications for teacher educators and senior managers in universities involved in Initial Teacher Education in England.

This dissertation analyzes the narrative use of sound, the rhetorical appeal to be heard and the trope of listening in African American literature as well as Hollywood and international cinema. Contributing to the burgeoning fields of film sound and listening studies, Chapter One explores the relationship between the first experiments with synchronous sound recording technology and the construction of subjectivity along the lines of ethnicity, religion and gender in early talkies such as Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer and Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail. Chapter Two surveys a range of abolitionist texts and select essays from the Civil Rights movement--particularly David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, Frederick Douglass's first autobiography Narrative of the Life and his novella "The Heroic Slave," W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk and Richard Wright's White Man, Listen!--in order to review the role of listening across racial divides in the United States. Chapter Three analyzes the multiple ways in which listening functions for narrative purposes in Wright's best-selling novel, Native Son; and Chapter Four addresses the trouble with listening in Wright's posthumous novel A Father's Law and Hitchcock's first color film, Rope.Contributing to film studies, gender studies, and critical race theory, this thesis argues that the act of listening comes to function figuratively as a trope, signifying not only a means of recognition, interpellation and subjugation of an Other but also an instrument of justice; a matter of politics; a means of education; a potential remedy for alienation, while at the same time working as a tool of oppression; a formative act in familial and other social relations; a governing form of surveillance; an audial gaze, so to speak; a way to frighten, or more generally, evoke emotion; a part of the therapeutic process; an indication of trust or confidence; a manifestation of (sexual) desire; and, last but certainly not least, an age old form of entertainment forever transformed by sound technology of the industrial age.

This thesis examines the ways in which exile, both actual and metaphorical, informs the work of four path breaking female writers from South Africa and the American South: Carson McCullers, Bessie Head, Zoë Wicomb and Dorothy Allison. In this study, exilic consciousness is closely linked to postcolonial, nomadic feminisms which can best be understood as liminal, as fundamentally ‘out of place’. The border-crossings involved here are not only geographical, they also signify a change in critical consciousness, as the foundational texts of this thesis – Rosi Braidotti’s Nomadic Feminism and Francoise Lionnet and Shu-Mei Shih’s Minor Transnationalism – indicate. By exploring writers who problematise the categories of race, gender, sexuality and class I demonstrate how these writers offer new ways of reading the postcolonial condition as nomadic, and I examine the shared processes that nations and individuals undergo as they experience political and personal liberation struggles. My thesis is divided into four main parts. The opening section offers both an introduction to, and rationale for, the study, providing historical and sociocultural contextualisation linking South Africa and the American South; it goes on to establish my choices of Carson McCullers and Dorothy Allison as the southern US writers in this study and Bessie Head and Zoë Wicomb as the South Africans. In the opening chapter I interrogate self-representation and variations in autobiography by the four writers. Chapter 2 has as its focus body and exilic consciousness in selected work by all four writers. My final chapter examines identity formation as situated subjectivity in the work of Allison and Wicomb who are foregrounded here. I contend that transnationalism need not be seen as inevitably homogenising; rather, I show that minority individuals and groups can establish agency through transversal, lateral networks.