Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wyoming, 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Dec. 18, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 126-140).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Toronto, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-06, Section: A, page: 2118. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-171).

Thesis (Ed. D.)--Illinois State University, 1991. / Title from title page screen, viewed December 16, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Susan F. Amster (chair), Barbara S. Heyl, Jack A. Hobbs, Eugene R. Irving, Patricia H. Klass, Fred A. Taylor. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-115) and abstract. Also available in print.

Using postmodern techniques and slave perspectives, late 20th century African-American authors Octavia Butler, Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Morrison, and Phyllis Alesia Perry complexify representations of enslaved women in American literature in novels termed “neo-slave narratives”. Revising sentimentalism, exoticization and appropriation, primarily by white authors, these authors emphasize slavery’s negative legacies, memorialization of slave sacrifice and culture, and female strength and agency. Contemporary white authors, wrestling with the traumatic history of slavery and white complicity, emulate neo-slave narrative authors, using communities of women and white empathy with the enslaved female body to join the reevaluation of slavery representations. In what I term “Reparational Literature”, contemporary white authors return to a slave setting to negotiate white guilt, to “repair” wrongs, and to explore modes of cross-racial interaction that recognize privilege. This involves destabilizing the white subject and emphasizing acknowledgement and empathy to resolve problems. Enslaved characters are agents rather than objects or surrogates, and their role in allowing the white women access to their wisdom, recognizing white contrition, and offering forgiveness is crucial to the novel’s resolution. Literature and art are often on the forefront of societal change; Reparational Literature signifies transformation in white consciousness as legal, economic, and symbolic reparations become more widely accepted. Reflecting Foucault’s idea of the body as a site of struggle and Womanist ideas of universalism and connection to the community, these writers present the enslaved female body as the place to remember and repair slavery’s negative impact, a locus for acknowledging and merging the violence of the past and hope for the future. In Valerie Martin’s Property, Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, Tara Conklin’s The House Girl, and Pam Durban’s So Far Back, the white woman who is given access to the symbolic language of the enslaved woman’s natural world, to hear and see the language of her enduring body, frees herself from the artificial influences of slaveholding. These authors continue the long tradition of the black body as a symbol, but I argue that they do so with an awareness of the position of whiteness and appreciation for slave sacrifice and subjectivity. / acase@tulane.edu

"Not My Father's Son" explores a new generation of white southern sons in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century whose resistance to the problematic construction of masculinity and the violence needed to sustain it allows them both the freedom to acknowledge openly their same-sex desires and to embrace life, as opposed to death, in the face of a homosexual identity that lies before them. Rather than excavate queer subjects that may have been coded in earlier mid-twentieth-century texts, my dissertation examines the psychological shifts concerning white masculinity that must occur for these gay subjects to exist openly and without compromise. In addressing the struggle these sons face in revising a problematic vision of the father, I discuss selected fiction and non-fiction from southern, white male authors written in the past thirty years, including two recently published memoirs by gay, southern, white men, Kevin Jennings and Kevin Sessums; a memoir by Lewis Nordan; and selected fiction from both Nordan and Jim Grimsley. I argue that these historical and literary depictions of white, gay, southern men in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century invoke a new paradigm in which the sons' challenge to the historical forces of supremacy (racism, sexism, and homophobia) inherent in the legacy of the white southern father opens up new spaces for both gay characters and gay men to exist. / acase@tulane.edu

Traditionally, academic narratives on Irish immigration to the Americas have focused on experiences of dislocation caused by changes in geography. Settlers, they argue, clung to Old World identities, adapted to new cultural habits or mixed the two. This dissertation explores the social and cultural transitions of Irish immigrants who arrived in New Orleans between 1780 and 1820, or during the city’s late Spanish colonial and early national period. Employing an object-focused perspective, it shows that these persons inhabited a transoceanic setting that linked Ireland and the Gulf Coast together in their shared investments in commerce and conscious consumerism. This resulted in a significant overlap between travelers’ Old and New World lives, and it suggests a new migratory model focused on continuity across the Atlantic Ocean. Referencing the examples of foods, linens and enslaved persons, this dissertation shows that Irishmen and women had ample contact with the non-local, even before they moved overseas. This prepared them, in many ways, for their lives abroad. Some goods, like the South American potato, were so ingrained in island culture by the late 1700s that consumers forgot its foreign provenance. Others, like textiles, had values that changed between Ireland and Louisiana. The example of slaveholding, in particular, points to the ways that immigrants encountered human-commodities common to their visual culture but unrecognizable in practice. The many Irish immigrants who became slave-owners, ultimately, adapted material languages concerning wealth and status they brought from Europe to these new consumerism. They thus made sense of the exotic in familiar terms. By examining the growth of commercial webs and the market availabilities of early New Orleans, this project offers an intimate look at experiences of movement, materiality and cosmopolitanism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. / acase@tulane.edu

While past research has indicated that migration tends to lead to the death of ethnic marker use such as language, my research defies this traditional understanding of how migration impacts identity performance by showing that migration experiences often lead to support for the home language. The traditional understanding of migration's impacts on the use of ethnic markers also means an inadequate understanding of how migration impacts returned migrants’ relationship to indigenous social movements that also support the use of ethnic markers. This research is located in the Kaqchikel-speaking region of highland Guatemala, a place with high rates of returned migrants and an indigenous social movement known as the pan-Maya Movement struggling to reach grassroots populations to which most returned migrants belong. This work shows the complex relationships and connections between migration and indigenous social movements through migrations' impact on the use key markers in the Kaqchikel region, including language and clothing. My research first revealed high rates of internal migration and defines common migration paths for the Kaqchikel Maya, which are gendered. I show that certain experiences in migration do not lead to language death for Kaqchikel but instead create support for it through a polylinguistic stance. This work also found that men's traje use will soon enter a "sleeping" state in which it is not actively used but is documented and preserved. However, returned migrants are actively supporting women's traje use. I thus show that experiences in migration encourage returned migrants to continue the use of ethnic markers, a stance supported by the pan-Maya Movement. The Movement has had difficulty connecting to grassroots populations that include most of the migrants in this study. This research thus shows how migration aligns migrants' ideologies with the pan-Maya Movement. I conducted research in the three Kaqchikel-speaking townships of Tecpán Guatemala, San Juan Comalapa, and Santa Catarina Palopó. Each township has significantly different historical interactions with the state, connections to urban centers, rates of migration, and policies regarding language and clothing use that impact current migration paths and ethnic marker usage in each township in important ways. / acase@tulane.edu

This thesis is a case study of the ancient graffiti found in a specific city block, the Insula of the Menander (I.X), in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. Contrary to the late 19th and early 20th century treatment of graffiti in Pompeian scholarship, which dismissed ancient graffiti as casual inscriptions with little relevance to the archaeology of Pompeii, recent scholarship approaches ancient graffiti as artifacts, studying them within their context. Using this contextual approach, my thesis examines the spatial distribution of the graffiti in the Insula of the Menander to better understand the use of public and private space. Chapter 1 introduces the topic of ancient graffiti in context, providing a brief description of the current state of scholarship and of the history of the Insula of the Menander. Chapter 2 discusses the challenges of defining ancient graffiti, and the various approaches to their interpretation. The two hypotheses are: first, that graffiti frequency and public and private space are related, and second, that graffiti type and room function are related. Chapter 3 outlines the methodology for analyzing the graffiti in context, and introduces general comparisons of frequency and spatial distribution. Chapter 4 continues this analysis, describing the graffiti in the context of each house and unit in the insula. Chapter 5 concludes that ancient graffiti, when used along with related archaeological evidence, are an informative source for studying the conceptualization and use of public and private space in antiquity, and may be used in future studies for gaining insight into the functions of space in the Roman cultural mindset. / acase@tulane.edu

To discover possible root causes of teen pregnancy and understand why school is often uncomfortable for girls were the goals of this study, which examines questions derived from poststructural theory through case studies of five young women who became mothers during their teens. Three had dropped out of school before, two during, pregnancy; four later earned G.E.D.'s and one a high school diploma. Data were gathered by participant observation and interviews over a three-year period during which the women were enrolled for one or two sessions in a college-based summer program which emphasized development of mutual support and academic confidence among participants. Both the program and the research process, which actively involved the study subjects, urged critical examination of the heterosexual imperative which appears central in young women's lives. Findings of the study include: (1) Study participants perceive self as multiple subjectivities formed through response to people around them, particularly their parents. (2) All participants assumed that their commonly reported sense of isolation, felt particularly in school, had its only solution in finding a man to be constantly present in their lives; the study suggests this desire for "Mr. Right" is constructed by social discourses which regulate choice for women. (3) Alternative discourses which open broader options for women are accessible through learning about other women's lives and through group exploration of relational issues. (4) Personal writing is a particularly effective site for trying out discourse positions which realign relational power dynamics in women's lives. The study suggests that the root cause of teen pregnancy is a sexist agenda designed to keep women isolated from each other and powerless. Implications for the schooling of girls and preventing teen pregnancy include emphasis on classroom community, redefinition of self to acknowledge desire for connection to others, and opportunity to explore relational issues in school through shared personal writing and discussion in a single-sex environment. The study argues a view of self as process and suggests that writing to rehearse new subject positions may play a significant role in the evolution of that process.