In the Caribbean, the eighteenth century symbolized a period of shifting powers in the region. Spain abandoned control of many of the smaller islands in the Caribbean, which were quickly taken over and subsequently controlled by the three major European competitors: England, France, and the Netherlands. These islands would be traded as prizes during various European conflicts that would always spread into the region. Unfortunately, most of the archaeological work that has occurred within the Caribbean has tended to largely focus on the micro-scale analysis. While development of a macro-scale analysis to assist an understanding of the past in the Caribbean is called for, not much has been done yet. This study examines the Caribbean in the eighteenth century to develop a model for inter-site comparison. I shall argue that consumptive patterns are knowable and testable through the archaeological record and may be seen through the development of a model for inter-site comparison. Finally, the connections developed from the importation of various goods, such as ceramics, provide opportunities to test ideas about contested peripheries which can be seen by means of historical data and statistical inference to understand the past relationship between global events and local acts of consumption within the Caribbean.

Jamaica is rich in contradictions. Life, like the landscape, is made up of great highs and lows, a wealth of beauty paralleled by intense desperation. This report explores these contradictions through an examination of the image of Jamaica packaged and presented to the world as a consumable tourism product. In 2012 as Jamaica prepares to celebrate 50 years of (in)dependence, the small nation finds itself battling (neo)colonialism, dependence, dispossession. Tourism is Jamaica’s main source of revenue and the industry is a major employer. The island’s role as a premier tourist destination is thus inseparable from Jamaicans’ daily lives. The current marketing slogan says to tourists ‘Once you go, you know”, I argue that this assertion is representative of the form tourism takes in Jamaica. By literally and figuratively granting understanding and ownership of the island and its resources to foreigners, the construction of Jamaica’s tourism product systematically commodifies Jamaica, its people, and culture. I seek to interrogate the role of tourism in Jamaica’s continued exploitation and to question the presence of secrecy, colonial nostalgia and national lies in how Jamaicans self identify and in how we are portrayed. / text

<p> This dissertation identifies three previously unexplained typological asymmetries between creoles, other types of language contact, and `normal' sound change. (1) The merger gap deals with phoneme loss. French /y/ merges with /i/ in all creoles worldwide, whereas merger with /u/ is also well-attested in other forms of language contact. The rarity of /u/ reflexes in French creoles is unexplained, especially because they are well attested in French varieties spoken in West Africa. (2) The assimilation gap focuses on stress-conditioned vowel assimilation. In creoles the quality of the stressed vowel often spreads to unstressed vowels, e.g. English <i>potato</i> > Krio /&rgr;&epsiv;&rgr;&tgr;&epsiv;&tgr;&epsiv;/. Strikingly, we do not find the opposite in creoles, but it is well attested among non-creoles, e.g. German umlaut and Romance metaphony. (3) The epenthesis gap is about repairs of word-final consonants.These are often preserved in language contact by means of vowel insertion (epenthesis), e.g. English <i> big</i> > Sranan <i>bigi</i>, but in normal language transmission this sound change is said not to occur in word-final position.</p><p> These case studies make it possible to test various theories of sound change on new data, by relating language contact outcomes to the phonetics of non-native perception and L2 speech production. I also explore the implications of social interactions and historical developments unique to creolisation, with comparisons to other language contact situations.</p><p> Based on the typological gaps identified here, I propose that sociohistorical context, e.g. age of learner or nature of input, is critical in determining linguistic outcomes. Like phonetic variation, it can be biased in ways which produce asymmetries in sound change. Specifically, in language contact dominated by adult second language acquisition, we find transmission biases towards phonological rather than perceptual matching, overcompensation for perceptual weakness, and overgeneralisation of phrase-final prominence.</p>

Through comparing the repertoires, presentational characteristics, and rehearsal procedures of Surinamese Maroon culture-based performance groups within Paramaribo, I outline the concept of personalizing tradition. This is based on the premise that differing social and performative practices lead to different understandings of the same performance genre, and that culture-based collectives, like those discussed here, mobilize tradition in order to fulfill a variety of social needs and aspirations. Their personalizing practices lead to embodied understandings of a variety of concepts, among them tradition, culture, professionalism, and cosmopolitanism. Through learning and presenting this composite of physical significations, performers generate visual and sonic representations of Maroon cosmopolitanism, thereby articulating aspects of the lived realities of Maroons whose life experiences diverge from the most commonly circulated characterizations of Maroon society—namely a population isolated from (or even incapable of comprehending) cosmopolitan and national technologies, aesthetic forms, and knowledge systems. Borrowing from jazz discourse, I posit that satisfaction and social poetic proficiencies arise from performers’ adeptness at playing the changes, in other words their capacities to understand the changing social circumstances in which they are acting and selecting expressive gestures that compliment those circumstances. The concept of playing the changes helps initiate a turn away from assessments of right or wrong ("real" or "made up") and focus instead on the ability to portray oneself to one’s best advantage, come what may. Finally, I demonstrate the advantages of pursuing an integrated approach to performance analysis, in which the study of musical and choreographic elements of performance are examined in combination. / Music

My dissertation Sea-ing Words: An Exploration of the Maritime in Contemporary Caribbean and Latino/a Literature analyzes how writers from the Spanish-speaking islands and their diaspora have moved past the ever elusive Pan-Antillean quest for unity, rooted in the acceptance of a foundational Trauma (with a capital T). The writers I examine venture to humanize the basin, highlighting the routes, exchanges, and negotiations that currently distinguish the region. In doing so, the idea of one edifying Trauma is displaced by the existence of multiple and individualized iterations. As marginalized discourses infiltrate the center, the flow of the conversation is altered, opening up spaces for new interactions. Through their uses of the maritime, these writers transform the sea into a stage from which new perspectives on Caribbean and Latino/a literature emanate. / Romance Languages and Literatures

The following dissertation outlines historical-archaeological research focused on the nineteenth-century, British plantation settlement at Lamanai, Belize. Archaeological data presented here include recent archaeological excavations (2014) and a study of previously excavated archaeological materials recovered at the site over the past 30 years (2009), conducted by this author. The study's archaeological data are synthesized in tandem with historical and documentary sources, comparative site data, and oral histories. Even though the study data span more than thirty years of recovery, it must be noted that very little research has focused on the late-colonial period at Lamanai to date. The most recent phase of archaeology is a foundational effort, which aims to set the stage for future late-colonial period, historical-archaeological studies. To this end, a great deal of effort has been spent here outlining the project's core theoretical and methodological foundations with which frame the current study and inform future research endeavors. Little is known about the eighteenth- and nineteenth- centuries at Lamanai, and to this end, the project aimed to answer questions regarding how life (residential, industrial, and administrative) was structured. While the archaeological and historical records have elucidated much about the plantation settlement at Lamanai to date, that data have also been frustratingly oblique and obfuscating with regard to intra-site variability among known British colonial activity and habitation areas.

I theorize about cultural hybridity; specifically, I theorize about transcultural rhetorics to consider the positive capabilities those rhetorics encourage in students within composition classrooms. People in our society frequently ignore and devalue hybridity and multiplicity, which are facts in our culture. Therefore, minority students, who are more likely to display transcultural elements in their rhetorics, also face devaluation of their use of language. People associate minority members of society with poor language use because their rhetorics "differ" from the USAmerican standard. This contributes to dismissal of transcultural rhetorics in classroom settings. Teaching standard uses of language negates other possible language strategies. Yet transcultural rhetorics provide a means to encourage students to value their potential and contributions to the communities with which they engage. I argue that teaching language and writing skills should use multiple approaches and encourage students' abilities to negotiate multiple discourse communities. Allowing people to move and to fit into more than one or two cultures will enhance success and survival in both dominant and non-dominant cultural groups. I use discussions by and about women-of-color to illustrate some of the real and significant issues revolving hybridity and acculturation/assimilation practices. Doing so helps to illustrate the psychological, social, and other political issues surrounding hybrid-USAmericans as they engage with education. While an increasing number of writers and teachers value and use rhetorics that represent multiplicity, teachers and writers need to understand and address the political and psychological processes hybrid people experience. The fact that many teachers encourage the kinds of writing research that I advocate does not negate the need for broader use of transcultural rhetorics. I present various ways that teachers can teach and encourage transcultural rhetorics within the dissertation. Although transcultural rhetorics can work for all teachers and all students, I focus on Latina writers because they frequently need greater understanding of their literate foremothers and the value of their Latina skills in USAmerican education. The work that follows urges teachers of composition and their students to use the transcultural rhetorics as one of many possible ways of transforming the world of academia and beyond.

Esta tesis analiza la identidad y la estructura narrativa en las obras de dos escritores hispanos, Reinaldo Arenas y Esther Tusquets, quienes escriben al borde de la transicion entre una vision del mundo moderna a la postmoderna. Arguyo que las obras de estos dos autores cuestionan los procesos de la construccion de la identidad desde la perspectiva de los que son marginalizados por este proceso. Para hacer este analisis, estudio el debate entre el modernismo/postmodernismo dentro del mundo hispano y como este dialogo puede iluminar nuestra interpretacion de las complejidades y los constantes tematicos que presentan estos dos autores. De la misma manera, analizo como estos autores incluyen este debate dentro de su presentacion de la dinamica del desarrollo humano. Para tales propositos, analizare El amor es un juego solitario (1978), El mismo mar de todos los veranos (1979), Varada tras el ultimo naufragio (1980) de Esther Tusquets y El mundo alucinante (1968) de Reinaldo Arenas. En este analisis se consideraran las relaciones tanto socio-historicas como artisticas que existen entre Modernidad y Postmodernidad y la forma en que estas caracteristicas se presentan en los textos analizados. Se plantea que la verdadera relacion entre la modernidad y la postmodernidad no es una de superacion sino de dialogo, la postmodernidad es la problematizacion de la modernizacion. Los conceptos modernos de la Ilustracion son cuestionados por ser inadecuados para describir las situaciones actuales. Es este escepticismo profundo hacia todos los aspectos de la vida lo que define al postmodernismo. Se cree que la modernidad no ha alcanzado sus metas por ser imposibles. La narrativa de Esther Tusquets y la de Reinaldo Arenas presentan este escepticismo profundo con un estilo en que predominan las figuras repetitivas, el erotismo, el retorno, el tiempo circular, el mar y la muerte, tanto como los pre-textos literarios, los cuales se deconstruyen para despues reconstruirse dentro de la re-creacion de una identidad propia a traves de las relaciones sexuales y la muerte. Asi se cuestionan las fronteras entre el sexo y el genero en el establecimiento de la identidad, reinterpretando y reescribiendo el pasado.

<p> This exploratory study examines the individual and family effects on intergenerational educational attainment mobility giving focus to the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, a small, newly-independent nation in the Caribbean region. </p><p> This study used a quantitative approach to provide an educational attainment profile of The Bahamas and to examine the effects of individual and family factors on the transmission of education from parent to child. The principal data sources used were the last three census reports produced in The Bahamas and the Bahamas Living Conditions Survey (BLCS) 2001dataset. Descriptive and inferential statistical analysis techniques were engaged. Transitional matrices, calculated using various soico-demographic variables, enabled the intergenerational mobility regarding education to be determined. Logistic regression, using a range of explanatory variables, allowed for the measurement of individual and family effects on three states of intergenerational educational attainment mobility (IEM). </p><p> Findings revealed that while the majority of Bahamians have an 'intermediate' level of education, over the last two decades the percentage of persons with only a 'basic' education declined while the percentage of those with an 'advanced' education increased. Additionally, the Prais-Shorrock Mobility Index suggests that, from an educational attainment point of view, children are fairly independent of their parents. However, some socio-demographic groupings, such as the younger birth cohorts, urban dwellers and those entering school after the establishment of the Ministry of Education in 1964 are more educationally mobile than others. </p><p> When measuring the effects of parental education, individual and family factors on the three states of IEM, the following conclusions were drawn. Regarding parents' education, the educational attainment of the father appears to be more of a predictor of IEM than the education of the mother. Nationality, as an individual explanatory variable, seems rather predictable. The other three individual factors, while having some predictive value, seem far less consistent as predictors of IEM. Finally, parental occupational status is the only family factor that has demonstrated any effect on IEM.</p>

The identity of the Caribbean as a territory is a veritable bricolage of cultural forms. Since Columbus’ mistaken arrival in the West Indies, these islands have become home to Spanish, French, Dutch, British, African, Indian and Chinese immigrants, alongside its Aboriginal inhabitants. Despite the massive diversity that can be seen in these islands, there exists one common cultural expression that has persisted for the past 200 years throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. This celebration is Carnival. Trinidad is the southernmost island in the archipelago that composes the Caribbean. Carnival is celebrated in many of Trinidad’s towns, the biggest celebration being held in its capital city, Port-of-Spain. This research thesis looks at Carnival in Port-of-Spain as a complex urban entity that ritualistically re-energises and reclaims the city’s streets. Through ecstatic celebration, the festival engenders a strong sense of communitas and collective identity, annually reinventing itself and occupying a liminal space between the Ordinary city of day-to-day living and the Extraordinary city of mythological complexity. As the festival moves through the city along its annual Parade Route, it creates an urban narrative which exists invisibly during the year in the city’s collective memory. Through a combination of descriptive text, scholarly research and experiential mapping, A City with Two Faces outlines the transformative qualities of Carnival in the streets of Port-of-Spain from its largest temporary urban forms to its smallest manifestations in syncretic masquerade archetypes.