Thesis (S.T.M.)--Yale University, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-86).

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1983. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed on Nov. 2, 2006). PDF text: 140 p. ; 9.21Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3214109. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm, microfiche and paper format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / "UMI Number: 3214109." Abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

abstract: Although the Caribbean has been continuously inhabited for the last 7,000 years, European contact in the last 500 years dramatically reshaped the cultural and genetic makeup of island populations. Several recent studies have explored the genetic diversity of Caribbean Latinos and have characterized Native American variation present within their genomes. However, the difficulty of obtaining ancient DNA from pre-contact populations and the underrepresentation of non-Latino Caribbean islanders in current research have prevented a complete understanding of genetic variation over time and space in the Caribbean basin. This dissertation uses two approaches to characterize the role of migration and admixture in the demographic history of Caribbean islanders. First, autosomal variants were genotyped in a sample of 55 Afro-Caribbeans from five islands in the Lesser Antilles: Grenada, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Trinidad, and St. Vincent. These data were used to characterize genetic structure, ancestry and signatures of selection in these populations. The results demonstrate a complex pattern of admixture since European contact, including a strong signature of sex-biased mating and inputs from at least five continental populations to the autosomal ancestry of Afro-Caribbean peoples. Second, ancient mitochondrial and nuclear DNA were obtained from 60 skeletal remains, dated between A.D. 500–1300, from three archaeological sites in Puerto Rico: Paso del Indio, Punta Candelero and Tibes. The ancient data were used to reassesses existing models for the peopling of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean and to examine the extent of genetic continuity between ancient and modern populations. Project findings support a largely South American origin for Ceramic Age Caribbean populations and identify some genetic continuity between pre and post contact islanders. The above study was aided by development and testing of extraction methods optimized for recovery of ancient DNA from tropical contexts. Overall, project findings characterize how ancient indigenous groups, European colonial regimes, the African Slave Trade and modern labor movements have shaped the genomic diversity of Caribbean islanders. In addition to its anthropological and historical importance, such knowledge is also essential for informing the identification of medically relevant genetic variation in these populations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Zipped file contains Appendices A-K. Supplemental tables, figures, protocols and spreadsheets associated with dissertation. / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2017

abstract: This project examines C.L.R. James, V.S. Naipaul, and George Lamming's appropriation of the European Bildungsroman, a novel depicting the maturation of the hero prompted by his harmonious dialectical relationship with the social realm (Bildung). I contend that James, Naipaul, and Lamming use the Bildungsroman genre to critique colonialism's effects on its subjects, particularly its male subjects who attend colonial schools that present them with disconcerting curricula and gender ideologies that hinder their intellectual and social development. Disingenuously cloaked in paternalistic rhetoric promising the advancement of "uncivilized" peoples, colonialism, these novels show, actually impedes the development of its subjects. Central to these writers' critiques is the use of houses, space, and land. Although place functions differently in Minty Alley, A House for Mr. Biswas, and In the Castle of My Skin, the novels under consideration here, the corresponding relationship between a mature, autonomous self and a home of one's own is made evident in each. Tragically, the men in these novels are never able to find communities in which they cease to feel out of place, nor are they ever able to find secure domestic spaces. Because the discourse of home so closely parallels the discourse of Bildung, I contend that the protagonists' inability to find stable housing suggests the inaccessibility of Bildung in a colonized space. Further, I assert that this literal homelessness is symbolic of the educated male's cultural exile; he is unable to find a location where he can live in dialectical harmony with any community, which is the ideal aim of Bildung. Leaving the Caribbean proves to be the colonized male's only strategy for pursuing Bildung; thus, these novels suggest that while Bildung is impossible in the Caribbean, it is not impossible for the Caribbean subject. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. English 2012

No description available.

This dissertation analyzes three novels by contemporary female Caribbean and Latin American Afro-descendent writers of the diaspora: Peruvian Lucía Charún-Illescas' Malambo (2001), Brazilian Ana Maria Gonçalves' Um defeito de cor (2006), and Puerto Rican Mayra Santos-Febres' Fe en disfraz (2009). In these texts, the old and the new intermingle in the space of the narrative. The colonial past is reexamined and reconstructed out of the need to understand its reminiscences into the present and the necessity to transform the future. These decolonial narratives of the contemporary African diaspora foster an expression of the interconnection between the two colonial spaces: where the African-descendents, especially the black female, were the objects of submission, and the present time, where the remnants of the past persist. I propose a reading of how the writers decolonize via history, memory, myth, and sex by challenging the construction of the colonial patriarchal rule and rewriting a new history to include the marginalized voices. Decolonization here implies a deconstruction of the image of colored people, especially black women in colonial time where they were deprived of their culture, personhood, and subjectivity. The writers propose a social transformation in which colonialism, racism, sexism, and classism are confronted and a new society is created, without the colonial power structure. The writers return to the roots of power and domination and examine the dynamics of the interconnection of gender, race, class, and sexuality and propose a new gender paradigm.

My dissertation is about the feminine Caribbean perspective in three novels: Calypso (1996) by Tatiana Lobo; L'exil selon Julia (1996) by Gisèle Pineau; and Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994) by Edwidge Danticat. The values and traditions involved in the patriarchal system are reevaluated to allow the Caribbean female voice to express itself. The novels are analyzed through the historical and linguistic specificities of the regions studied: the modernization of a small town on the Atlantic Coast of Costa Rica, exile from the Caribbean to France, and the Haitian Diaspora in the United States. The Caribbean is seen as a heterogeneous area sharing particular and general historical facts. Female figures express themselves in English, French and Spanish concerning the domestic sphere and how it is affected by ethnic, migratory, and cultural traditions. Female bonds and religion work together, giving agency to the female characters and allowing them to reconcile their unique experiences. The novels are understood together from a pan-Caribbean feminist perspective informed by the works of Édouard Glissant and Chandra Talpade Mohanty.

In the final quarter of the 18th century, a planter's dwelling overlooking the Caribbean Sea at Little Bay on the northwest coast of Montserrat in the British Leeward Islands was destroyed by fire and never reoccupied. Archaeological excavations in 2010 and 2011 yielded fragments of personal adornment, dress, household furnishings, and the house containing them providing an intimate portrait of an anonymous white male and his domestic arrangements. We do not know much about the planter class, though its members were central to the structure of 18th-century West Indian society. I use this rich archaeological data alongside archival, pictorial, and comparative analyses to particularize a West Indian planter and investigate the construction of colonial Creole identity. Evidence from archaeological, architectural, and ethnographic sources allow a reconstruction of the plantation house as a single-pile, three-cell plan, wood-frame structure with a raised masonry foundation and front gallery. This form, adapted to the Caribbean environment, altered English understanding and use of private and public spaces. Through archival research, I linked Little Bay to the Piper family, documenting its transfer through generations of unmarried male relatives. At the time of the fire the inhabitant was a Montserratian born, third-generation white male of English descent, meaning a white Creole. Ceramic gaming disks and glass beads identical to examples found in enslaved contexts indicate a household comprised of domestic slaves and planter. The head of household was a wealthy male versed in 18th-century British aesthetics as shown by a fob seal, coat buttons, and flintlock pistol. Punch bowls, glassware, tea and tableware reflect refined British cultural sensibilities, but as first-person travelogues recount, such goods were redeployed in distinctive colonial form with Creole open-door sociability and shared domesticity with household enslaved. Taken together, the finds demonstrate how this colonial Creole used English material goods to craft a distinctive form of white masculine identity within the West Indian planter class. In this world of mixed classes, races, and heritages, such formulations required choices. My research highlights how British objects and local practice combined to create new meanings for plantation society in Montserrat and the West Indies.