Mentoring is defined as an “intense caring relationship in which persons with more experience work with less experienced persons to promote both professional and personal development” (Caffarella, 1992, p. 38). It is “a powerful emotional, and passionate interaction whereby the mentor and protégé experience…intellectual growth and development” (Galbraith & Zelenak, 1991, p. 126). In cross-cultural mentoring, mentors and protégés from different cultures confront social and cultural identities, goals, expectations, values, and beliefs (Cross & Lincoln, 2005) to “achieve a higher level of potency in education and society” (Mullen, 2005, p. 6). Cross-cultural mentoring research explores attitudes, behaviors, linguistics and motivators of the more visible racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. (Elmer, 1986, Ulmer, 2008). The cross-cultural mentoring experiences of Indo-Caribbeans in the U.S. are obscured from the research despite their rich socio-historic culture. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the perceptions of Indo-Caribbean protégés regarding the effects of their cross-cultural mentoring experiences in the United States. Phenomenology is “the systematic attempt to uncover and describe…the internal meaning structures, of lived experience [by studying the] particulars or instances as they are encountered” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 10). Criterion and snowball sampling were used to recruit 15 participants. A semi-structured interview guide was used to gather data and Creswell’s (2007) simplified version of Moustakas’s (1994) Modification of the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen Method of Analysis of Phenomenological Data was used to analyze the data. Three themes emerged: (a) “Sitting at the feet of gurus” taught protégés how to accept guidance, (b) Guru-Shishya: Learning and Discipleship, ways that protégés perceived mentors’ guidance related to work, skill acquisition, and social or emotional support, and (c) Samavartan sanskar: Building Coherence, helped protégés understand, manage and find meaning. Protégés’ goals and professional expectations determined what they wanted from cross-cultural mentoring relationships and what they were willing to endure within those relationships. Since participants valued achievement and continuous improvement, mentor support was integral to making meaning and developing a sense of coherence in their lives. Implications regarding cross-cultural mentoring relationships together with recommendations for future research conclude the study.

Abstract not available.

En esta tesis se analizan tres novelas y dos peliculas cubanas publicadas durante el Periodo especial teniendo en cuenta los abordajes en relacion a los preceptos articulados en la narrativa institucional de la Revolucion y el dialogo que sostienen con el canon literario y filmico cubano que les precede. El corpus incluye las novelas Trilogia sucia de La Habana (1998), de Pedro Juan Gutierrez; Cien botellas en una pared (2002) de Ena Lucia Portela; Los palacios distantes (2002) de Abilio Estevez, y las peliculas Suite Habana (2003) de Fernando Perez y Miel para Oshun (2001) de Humberto Solas. En la indagacion se exploran tres topicos fundamentales: las nuevas respuestas al paradigma de Hombre nuevo, la representacion de las subjetividades lesbicas/homosexuales, y las recientes propuestas de nacion. Para el estudio de Trilogia sucia de La Habana , en el capitulo dos, se retorna el debate en torno a la posmodernidad, en concreto el planteamiento de Jean-Francois Lyotard sobre el debilitamiento de las metanarrativas y la emergencia de las "pequenas historias". En el marco de los desafios a los paradigmas de la modernidad el estudio de todas las obras presta atencion al cuestionamiento de las llamadas "identidades perdurables" y de las categorias identitarias de genero y raza en el contexto de los ideales revolucionarios en Cuba. El trabajo se nutre de los desafios planteados por academicas como Judith Butler a los esencialismos identitarios que categorizan los comportamientos y creencias ligados a la sexualidad bajo parametros que van de lo natural a lo perverso. Estas reflexiones contribuyen en el capitulo tres al estudio de la representacion de las subjetividades homosexual y lesbica en las novelas de Abilio Estevez y Ena Lucia Portela. En el capitulo cuatro se examinan dos formas de imaginar la nacion propuestas en las peliculas Miel para Oshun y Suite Habana. El nacionalismo se estudia, como lo sugiere Benedict Anderson, como un "artefacto cultural", es decir como el conjunto de creencias compartidas, en constante proceso de creacion e imaginacion, que transmiten una idea de unidad.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, “Adaptation to climate change is defined as, an adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities” (IPCC 2007). Adaptation is required due to the increase in the number of natural disasters and extreme changes in environmental conditions in coastal areas that are a function of sea level rise, floods, extreme heat, drought, and coastal storm surge from severe storms. To reduce the impacts of climate change risks in the future, coastal communities through local government initiatives are compelled to develop and implement grass roots community plans. This study is part of an International Community-University Research Alliance (ICURA), “C-Change” that aims to develop community-based adaptation protocols based on best practices and through the evaluation of the scientific method of problem solving designed to help coastal communities be sustainable and to protect their local coastal environments. To this end, the thesis reviews the international development and application of adaptive strategies related to climate change and evaluates these global strategies for identification of best practices and application to coastal communities. The objective of this research is to design and develop improved C-Change community adaptation frameworks by analyzing the applications of international protocols and local action plans with respect to the scientific method and of problem solving through using AHP (Analytic hierarchy process) as a tool, and by choosing best practices to provide guidelines for communities’ climate adaptation plans for the C-Change ICURA coastal communities in Canada.

Climate change poses one of the biggest challenges that most countries have to face over the coming decades. The transformations in our global weather patterns are expected to bring some very adverse effects for most of the island nations that comprise the Caribbean region. These nations have been continuously identified as one of the territorial groups that are most vulnerable to climate change, while the region barely contributes to the main triggers of these changes. Caribbean island nations have many elements that hinder their individual and regional development. Climate change will aggravate those conditions while bringing new challenges to these territories, particularly in the capital cities, as these urban areas serve are the main economic, social, political and cultural centres of these nations. A good understanding of the vulnerabilities of these cities will become a critical factor for developing good adaptation measures for their respective nations. Planning can prove useful for implementing climate change adaptation strategies, particularly for cities. This research provides three main contributions to the literature on climate change and on urban planning studies. First, it expands the discussion upon the linkages between disaster risk reduction experiences and climate change adaptation practices. Second, it highlights the relevance of capital cities for evaluating climate change impacts and adaptation actions for small island territories. The third contribution is the creation of a planning tool to assess climate change vulnerabilities of Caribbean cities. These three elements will further expand the existing knowledge base related to climate change adaptation and urban planning disciplines, particularly pertaining to the Caribbean region. Caribbean cities will greatly benefit from a planning perspective that can guide their development processes in the face of climate impacts. By means of vulnerability assessments it is possible to facilitate the analysis of climate change impacts and outcomes on vulnerable areas and planners can contribute to this aspect. A planning support tool was created to aid in the development of a vulnerability assessment for small island cities in the region - the Caribbean Climate change Urban Vulnerability Index (CCUVI). Using the CCUVI, a vulnerability assessment methodology was developed, using the city of San Juan (Puerto Rico) as a case study. The results of the vulnerability assessment helped identify five different areas within the case study city that are prone to be more affected by climate change impacts. The assessment also analysed how the vulnerability conditions in these areas and in the city changed through time, exploring two distinct scenario storylines for San Juan towards 2050. A series of normative and operational recommendations emerged from the assessment process that will help planners and policymakers engage in adaptation actions to reduce the climate vulnerabilities of Caribbean small island capital cities.

The present stage of the vast majority of the peoples of the third world is characterized as existing in various stages of underdevelopment. Beyond that, however, there does not appear to he any overriding consensus as to how they got there, or perhaps more importantl;/", what combination of policies are likely to obviate such conditions. Consequently, there has been a proliferation of theories and prescriptions that have resulted in varying degrees of success and failure, without succeeding in-any major way to alleviate the conditions of poverty and oppression. The major problem with such attempts is in their "all-or-nothing" approach'", characterized by the belief that specific changes are either all pervading in their effects or, on the other hand, are not significant enough to warrant any particular distinction. The purpose of this study is to show that such an approach is misleading, First of all, underdevelopment is seen as the result of a specific form of development that has as its basis the relationship of the advanced capitalist and the underdeveloped countries of the third world. Since this relationship is characterized by a host of interlocking arrangements it is necessary, to comprehend them in their totality, if the process is to be understood at all. It should be immediately recognized, however, that though specific changes may not effect the structural contingencies of the relationship, they sometimes are of such significance that they constitute an important change. Such an articulation of the problem has the decisive advantage of noting and recording the specific changes within this relationship while recognizing the all pervasive effects of its totality. The result of such an investigation led us to the following conclusions: (l) the recent change in the attitude of the advanced capitalist countries has resulted in greater flexibility in their dealings with the underdeveloped countries. Most important, in this respect, has been that the "enclave economies" have been largely relinquished. Multinational corporations, at the same time, have been willing and. even calling for local government participation in their activities. (2) Governments of the third world have demanded and subsequently appropriated greater control of the local economy through participation and even nationalization of key sectors. This, in addition, allowed for greater maneuverability on the so called "inter-imperialist battlefield", with the result that they can now appropriately be described as junior partners of the system. Thus", imperialism and development are not contradictory terms; it is simply that dependent underdevelopment is the new form of imperialist control. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Coral reefs and the ecological, social, and economic benefits that they provide are seriously endangered by a colossal number of threats. This study was conducted in marine protected area (MPA) in the Mexican Caribbean. The purpose of this study was to provide results that can be directly applied by MPA managers to improve coral reef conservation and management. Characterization of four coral reef sites and stressors described in a proxy map were integrated into a comparative resilience assessment. Sites ranged from 16.5% to 3.5% coral cover and 47.5% to 12% macroalgal cover. Stressor distribution and intensity was highest near the Puerto Morelos town center and followed general water current patterns. Fishing, tourism, and pollution were identified as major stressors on which management can positively influence. The results of this study provide managers throughout the Caribbean a managerial tool chest to improve management efficacy and bolster conservation initiatives.

In this study I provide close textual analysis of the novels of three women writers whose work displays a consistent preoccupation with issues of race, and examine the ways in which their racial representations interplay with their depictions of gender and sexuality. Writing from a consciously gendered and racialized position, I combine personal narrative with theoretical discussion as I trace common racial themes, such as racial violence, cross-racial couples, and the denial or erasure of race. In an examination of other critics who have employed personal narrative as a form of literary analysis, I affirm the value of teaching and reading literary texts as a mode of activism. I also examine the depiction of white male protagonists, exploring the ways in which such depictions require a transracial, cross-gender performance on the part of the woman writer. Recurring patterns of racial dynamics emerge in the larger body of each author's work. A West Indian female racial identity emerges in Rhys' work as, consciously and unconsciously, her white heroines identify with black slave women, and seek another form of "blackness" through alcoholic oblivion. Gordimer's white women seek to slough off the racial privilege they are only too aware of, but Gordimer creates narratives in which white female identity merges textually with black male identity and black female identity, linguistically and through shared political action. Morrison's black women, doubly othered by race and by gender, seek to transcend all boundaries through wildly transgressive behavior, enacted boldly or imagined through language. In my final chapter, I explore the ambiguities and struggles of the construction of female racial identity in American, South African and Caribbean contexts, with particular attention to moments of textual rupture which signal the possibility of fluid identity. I demonstrate how Morrison, Gordimer, and Rhys employ a variety of narrative forms which allow readers to enter an in-between space, a starting point for the transformation of consciousness and of society. Literature is an ideal vehicle for entering the in-between space imaginatively, and dwelling there longer and longer as we rid ourselves of preconceived notions of race and gender.

Matrixial reading is a new methodology for literary criticism that emphasizes the ethical relevance of literature. Adhering to an interdisciplinary approach, I adopt feminist artist and psychoanalyst Bracha Ettinger's paradigm of subjectivity-as-encounter, based on the maternal/late pre-natal infant relation, to refigure reading relations. Analyzing selected texts, I show how readers are invited to form an ethical covenant based on matrixial, as opposed to phallic, relations. I discuss exile and the foreign in Dany Laferrière's novels; Marguerite Duras' work provokes an epistemological reflection on ignorance; with Nancy Huston I demonstrate the role of reading in healing trauma.

This study reveals the differences and similarities among U.S. Latino and Spanish American literatures. This is achieved through the juxtaposition and dialogue among Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban; Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory and Days of Obligation ; Rosario Castellano's Balún Canán, and Reinaldo Arenas' Antes que anochezca. In choosing texts from Mexico and Cuba we are seeking to reveal contrasts and links with the Chicano and Cuban-American narratives. Similarly, by selecting said texts and authors, there is a balance between issues of sexual gender and orientation, as well as in regards to the original language in which the texts were conceived. In their quest for identity from a marginal starting point, all four authors aim to create a response to hegemony. We approach these texts from the theoretical parameters of the studies of autobiography, with a special emphasis on Bildungsroman, since their protagonists see their self-formation as a process that would enable them to behave in a functional manner in the communities they are immersed. It is from this marginal position that values such as family and education question the power of traditional hegemony. Another element that subverts the establishment is the treatment of gender and sexuality in the texts. Since the protagonists' identity is conceived from a women's or a homosexual standpoint, traditional values are questioned. Finally, the analysis of the texts deals with their relationship to the imagined national space. Castellanos and Rodriguez approach the concept of nation though the indigenous question. Garcia and Arenas relate to Cuba by way of their comment on the Castrist Revolution. The different narratives of the self that make up this study place their voices in the intestitial space of the periphery. It is from that space that they address the center in a variety of ways.